Gov’t tasked to Name and Shame High Profile Corrupt Public Officers

Government has been tasked to name and shame public officers who are under investigation on allegations of corruption.

In a statement submitted by Hon Joyce Bagala, the shadow minister for Ethics and Integrity on behalf of the opposition during the Wednesday plenary sitting, the State minister of Ethics and Integrity, Lilly Akello has been urged to provide a list of individuals who have been investigated for corruption and the respective amounts of monies recovered from them. Yesterday, minister Akello presented a statement on the commemoration of International Anti-Corruption Day where she told highlighted the plight of anti-graft agencies in the fight against corruption.

“The Minister in her statement to the House reported an investigation of 26 high-profile cases. Our country needs to know who are these high-profile public officers investigated. What was the outcome of the reported investigations, warranting the recovery of Shs18.2 billion?” Bagala said.

Bagala said the Minister’s statement is silent on the punitive measures instituted against such public officers.

“One of the ways of fighting corruption is naming and shaming, but the minister only talks of recovery without saying which individuals or MDAS the money was recovered from,” she added.

Minister Akello committed to table the list and a comprehensive report on the status of corruption in the country will be presented next year.

According to the minister’s statement, the Anti-Corruption Unit has recovered up to 41.6bn of which Shs8.6bn was from inflated Covid-19 relief food prices, Shs4.5bn from Local Governments, and Shs3.6bn from inflated compensation of Bukasa inland port project affected persons. On the other hand, the Auditor General carried out 6,763 financial compliance audits, 23 value for money audits, 101 specialised engineering audits, 85 forensic special audits and 9 IT audits over the last 3 financial years where Shs175bn was recovered.