The parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating allegations of bribery in the Oil sector has been advised to call off its foreign trips that were meant to establish whether indeed three Senior Ministers accused of corruption took bribes to influence the awarding of contracts.
The advice is contained in a March 27, 2012 letter written by the Accounting Officer to Parliament, Kwamya Kaija, to the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, and explaining the lack of funds as a reason curtailing their planned activities.
But Kaija has alternatively advised the committee to split itself into four smaller and less costly groups, and undertake the trips concurrently, should they insist that they want to proceed with all the trips as earlier planned.
The letter which Kaija copied to the Ad hoc Committee on Oil, the Clerk to Parliament and the Ad hoc Committee on Energy, said that parliament was facing a financial hardship that could not allow the Oil investigation committee to do its work as planned.
In his two page letter, a copy of which URN has seen, Kaija says that the financial situation of the Parliamentary Commission remains precarious and she advises that the committee be requested to rationalize the size of each delegation and the number of days spent in each country. Kaija also advises the committee to explore alternative ways of getting the information they require from the target countries without necessarily having to travel there.
In response to Kaija’s letter, on Thursday April 19, Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga, wrote to the Chairman of the Ad hoc committee on Oil, Michael Werikhe, advising him to split his committee into four different teams for them to travel concurrently to the countries where they would carry out their investigations. She said the split into smaller groups would minimize costs and fit within available funds earmarked for the committees.
The team had planned to travel to the US, UK, United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Kenya and Malta. They had planned their travel to begin on Sunday April 25th and end on May 19th this year.
The team is meant to start with Malta, where the money used to bribe Ministers Sam Kutesa and Hillary Onek is said to have originated from. They would then connect to other countries where the bribe monies are said to have gone through, ending with Nairobi, Kenya, where it is said Kutesa owned a company called the East African Development Limited, said to have been used as a conduit to receive the bribe money from Oil companies.
The financial squeeze now complicates the investigations on allegations of bribery made against the three senior ministers because their travels to the foreign countries were mainly aimed at finding out details about this matter.
Investigating the bribery allegation is actually term of reference number one out of the eight resolved by parliament on October 11 last year when the house debated the matter during a special parliamentary debate.
Other Terms of Reference include regularization of the Oil sector, investigating the process of Procurement of the Oil companies, assessing how much money had already been paid to Uganda by the Oil companies and reporting back investigation findings to the house within 90 days.
On Thursday, Michael Werikhe confirmed that there was a delay in release of funds to the investigation committee by the commission but had expressed hope that money would be released to his committee next week. This new development now leaves the committee in a dilemma of whether to continue with their bribery investigation or drop it off the list of references to work on.
Werikhe says his committee has already finalized majority of the other terms of reference and is only left with the travels before compiling its report. He says they need about 200 million shillings to finalise their investigation.
A source close to the investigation on Friday said that it is better to leave the bribery allegations instead of doing a half baked job due to the lack of funds. The source said that what the current situation means is that should they decide to go ahead with their foreign trips, then they would have to again heavily rely on the same government officials such as those from the Police and Foreign Affairs ministry who did the first investigation in the matter.
