Former Principal Accountant in the office of the Prime Minister, Geoffrey Kazinda was been sentenced to 40 years in jail having been found guilty of 420 counts including forgery, causing financial loss and conspiracy.
Kazinda was sentenced on 24th September to 40 years in jail and ordered to pay the government Shs.19billion restitution, in a judgement presided over by Justice Margaret Tibulya of the Anti-Corruption Court in Kololo, Kampala. The judge also added that Kazinda should not hold any public office for a period of 10years from the day of judgement as per the Anti-Corruption Act 2009, also promising to issue the entire ruling in due course given one of the co-accused was absent.
According to prosecution, the government and other development partners entered a Joint Financing Agreement with Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for northern Uganda. Shs20bn of donor funds under PRDP was fraudulently credited on the crisis, management and recovery program account in Karamoja between December 1,2011 and January 30,2012.
Many development partners made various financial contributions as budget support for PRDP.
The funds were transferred to the account of the Prime Minister by Wilbert Okello, the co-accused, and then Principal Systems Analyst, under the Accountant General with the assistance of David Mugisha and Bridget Atwine (Senior Economist and Senior Accountant respectively in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economics) with Kazinda’s active involvement. The money was however wiped clean in a forgery strike and the donor funds were wired to a dormant account.
To fully conclude the process, access was needed from the Finance server at Bank of Uganda and the password used was traced back to Wilbert. The money was wired to bank accounts of food suppliers and officials who returned it back to Kazinda. The scandal forced the government to refund 26.4 million USD to the donors.
Following criticism of the recent appointment of Beti Olive Kamya as Inspector General of Government calling her incompetent for the job, she re-echoed her confidence in the president’s decision saying, “The President knows what he is doing because I am simply among the fishermen he talked about as he alerted Ugandans to expect real serious work under his term of government when there is going to be zero tolerance for corruption.”
The mode of executing her duties still leaves a big question mark especially on whether she will be able to deal with people like Kazinda who have served for 10 years plus in public offices. While his sentence is an indicator of some work being done, corruption continues to gnaw at the core of the country’s leadership given the bureaucratic manner of handling such cases.
