Govt loses $4m in double payments By Emmanuel N. Mugarura August 27, 2003
KAMPALA - Minister Sam Bitangaro is coming under the spotlight for his role in a case that has cost the taxpayer more than $4 million. The minister of state for Gender and Cultural Affairs is now being accused of knowingly getting the courts of law to unwittingly order a double payment for goods the government had already paid for. He reportedly connived with some officials in the Attorney General’s office. The accusation dates back to the period before Mr Bitangaro was appointed a government minister in 2001. He was then a partner at Bitangaro & Co. Advocates. Bitangaro initiated a court process that ended with the Uganda government being ordered to double-pay a Yugoslav firm that had supplied trucks to the Ministry of Defence. Case had expired Bitangaro had written to the Attorney General (AG) informing him that his client was suing the Uganda government for a bad debt. Bitangaro should have known that there was no case. Under the law the case had been overtaken by time limitation (more than six years) yet Bitangaro went ahead with the notice to sue. Surprisingly, he received a reply from the AG’s chambers, which revived the case. Under the law, civil cases based on contract expire after six years but if the debtor acknowledges the debt, the counting of days is effective from the day the debtor accepts the debt. Bitangaro knew this and the AG’s office obviously knew it too. The government was issued with the intention to sue from Bitangaro & Co. Advocates in 2000 and the Ministry of Finance was alerted about the costs involved. Because the AG’s office had acknowledged the debt, the government was sued in the Commercial Court and the AG did not bring any evidence that the debt had already been paid. Full payment made Ministry of Finance officials told The Monitor that they informed the AG’s office that all payment had been completed. Their advice was ignored. “We told them that the government fully paid the debt. It’s the same documents that we showed them after they had made a double payment, and they started saying that we were witch-hunting them,” Finance officials told The Monitor yesterday. The weakest link was that the government had conceded in writing that it owed the Yugoslav firm the money in question. And after a long wait, Justice James Ogoola passed judgement in favour of the Yugoslav firm, in part because the government had ignored advice to present the relevant papers as proof of payment. Case moves to London Bitangaro’s firm then asked court, under the reciprocal enforcement of judgement acts, to have the judgement registered in the United Kingdom. This was because under Ugandan law no one is allowed to attach government property to recover a debt. Under the threat to have the case registered in the UK and possibly auction the Uganda House in London, the AG advised the government to avoid humiliation and pay. The government started paying in 2001 when Bitangaro was already a government minister. The government has so far paid $4 million (Shs 8,000,000,000) to the Yugoslav firm. The irony is that the same company had already been paid before the collapse of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Insiders connived Finance ministry officials have papers to suggest that the firm had been fully paid and the government did not owe it any money at the time Bitangaro gave a notice to sue for the ‘bad debt’. In fact Finance officials were not happy that the AG’s office had written back to Bitangaro, without consultation, accepting liability for a debt that the government had already cleared. A Finance ministry official who was suspected to have blown the whistle on the scandal was threatened until he sought armed police protection. The cost could have been avoided had there been no connivance from within the Attorney General’s office. “Everything was planned because they ignored all advice and evidence. They knew all the truth,” an insider source said. “Any lawyer could have argued the case even in the preliminary presentations,” he said. Museveni not happy President Yoweri Museveni is reportedly so annoyed that the AG’s office could not detect the deficiency to advise the government accordingly. “The President knows that there was something wrong and he is unhappy,” the source said. It is alleged that Bitangaro had connived with Mr Deus Byamugisha, the acting director of civil litigation in the AG’s office. If true, that would explain why Byamugisha was suspended on Friday last week. There remains a running feud over that money between Finance ministry officials and the AG’s office. Bitangaro & Co. Advocates have since run a paid advert in The EastAfrican newspaper to explain their role in the whole affair. The law firm denied any complicity in the matter, although they did not deny they had been involved in the court case on behalf of their client. For three days, The Monitor failed to get a response from Minister Bitangaro, who is now also the acting Attorney General. He is reportedly out of the country. \\\\\\\"Always be a first rate version of yourself instead of a second rate version of someone else.\\\\\\\\\\\\\" Njoki Paul University of Pretoria -------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
