KAMPALA:
The Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) bosses may face jail over the Shs.100bn Kampala-Entebbe Expressway fraud.
This shocking revelation was revealed by controversial lands junior minister Dr. Sam Mayanja during an exclusive interview with theGrapevine.
Mayanja said that he has received a dossier from a whistleblower narrating how officials from UNRA and those in the Ministry of Lands defrauded government during the construction of the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway.
“I have already established a select committee to investigate the fraud and I am expecting their report before the end of this year, but I can assure you, people are going to sleep in prison,” Mayanja said.
He explained that when some officials from UNRA got information that government had entered into a deal with the Chinese government to construct the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway, they immediately connived with Ministry of Lands officials and issued fake land titles so that they can be compensated by government.
Mayanja said that it is the reason why government spent a lot of money compensating affected persons yet it is public knowledge that much of the land on Kampala-Entebbe Expressway were wetlands, forest reserves and gazetted road reserves.
He said that the land titles were issued in the wetlands, forests reserves and road reserves all owned by government not private citizens.
“There was a lot of fraud. How can you compensate a person with a land title in the wetland? Government is going to sell the properties of those UNRA and Ministry of Lands officials who were involved in the scam to recover taxpayers’ money worth Shs.100bn.
And if we find out that the properties they own are not worth the money they stole, they will be imprisoned,” Mayanja said.
He divulged that a similar scheme was used during the construction of the Northern Bypass where UNRA compensated top city tycoons for owning land titles in wetlands and government lost billions of money.
The celebrated co-founder of the Kampala Associated Advocate(KAA), a renowned city law firm revealed that his boss President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is already equipped with all the information.
They have also established that such money is being used by fake city tycoons to illegally evict bibanja owners from their land.
Mayanja noted that the money which will be recovered by the government will be used to pay the big debt that government secured to construct such big public projects.
It should be noted that Justice Catherine Bamugemereire and her probe teams both on UNRA and Land, discovered that the mafias hide behind land grabbers in UNRA and in the Ministry of Lands.
Minister Mayanja revealed that the president is carefully studying Bamugemereire’s recommendations to squeeze mafias in his government.
CREDIT: GRAPEVINE
