Presidential Press Secretary Tamale Mirundi has paid 150 million shillings to the Ministry of Works Permanent Secretary, Charles Muganzi, as an out-of-court settlement of a defamation case filed by the latter.
This was disclosed by Muganzi’s lawyer Achilles Lubega to URN shortly after the two sides appeared before High Court Judge Elizabeth Musoke on Friday to formally close the case.
However, the consent judgment before court does not indicate the 150 million paid to Muganzi as compensation.
According to the consent judgment, each party is to bear its own costs in pursuing this case.
The consent also shows that Mirundi is supposed to meet the costs of an earlier application in which court temporary ordered him not to utter any more defamatory statements against the Permanent Secretary until the main suit was heard and disposed of.
The two parties settled the matter out of court two weeks ago but Mirundi had not yet officially appended his signature onto the consent judgment as he was reportedly out of the country.
Mirundi was dragged to court in February this year for allegedly defaming Muganzi while appearing on local FM radio stations—Star, Super and Metro—late last year and early this year respectively.
Mirundi could not return repeated phone calls from URN.
Muganzi had accused Mirundi of insinuating that he was among a small clique of thieves in the government who should be content with their vast bounty that they had got.
He had also accused Muganzi of being one of the people who sank a passenger ferry on Lake Victoria.
According to Muganzi, he contends that the statements uttered by Mirundi were understood by rightful thinking members of society to mean that he was a thief, a criminal, insubordinate, a crook, a liar, untrustworthy, not honest, and not a proper person to act as Permanent Secretary.
He was seeking for costs claiming the alleged utterances had damaged his public image.
