Former UMEME cashier ordered to refund over sh50m

By Betty Amamukirori

RACHEAL Igaga Basalirwa, a former cashier at UMEME has been ordered to refund the company sh50.9m she swindled and complete her nineteen months jail term, after losing an appeal.

The order was made by Justice Lawrence Gidudu of the Anti-Corruption court after upholding an earlier conviction handed down to the convict by the same court's Grade One Magistrate, Julius Borore, last year.

Borore tried and convicted Basalirwa of embezzlement, and sentenced her to nineteen months. He also ordered her to refund UMEME the sh50.9m she had stolen from it. So far she is remaining with seven months to complete her prison term at Luzira Prison.

Court heard that in April 2, 2012, while working as a cashier at Tweed Plaza UMEME branch, Basalirwa went to Standard Chartered Bank on Speke Road, Kampala to bank the money which had been carried there by the Cash in Transit (CIT) Personnel.

According to the prosecution, she banked cash and cheques amounting to sh107.4m leaving a balance of sh50.7m unbanked.

After banking, she did not surrender the deposit slips and instead kept on moving in and out of office claiming she was unwell.

Eventually, she switched off her phone and only appeared a week later to confess that she had used the money to pay off a debt she owed a one Jackie Akello.

However, she appealed against the judgment and through her lawyer Martin Mbaza, she accused Borore of failing to properly evaluate the evidence on record, thereby arriving at a wrong decision.

Mbaza argued that the theft of the money was not proved because the state did not adduce evidence showing how much money was put in the CIT boxes in order to determine how much was missing after she had banked.

He criticized Borore for relying on CCTV footage to make judgment yet he did not watch it because he inherited the case from another magistrate. Mbaza said that the footage does not also show his client stuffing the money in her hand bag.

Mbaza said that the sentence handed down to his client was excessive and harsh because Basalirwa did not steal the money.

In defense, Scovia Kebirungi who represented the state said that the footage showed the convict giving bundles of money to a person standing next to her while she put the remaining inside her bag.

She said Basalirwa's conduct was suspicious and that in her earlier statement she admitted to stealing about sh55m.

In his ruling on Tuesday, Gidudu noted that upon perusing through the evidence on record, he found that the prosecution evidence that she stole the money was never challenged by her lawyers during the main trial.

"I have not found any challenge of the prosecution evidence in regard to the suspicious conduct of the appellant on the day she went to the bank," he said.

The judge said that the testimonies adduced in court against Basalirwa were corroborative and pinned her to the theft.

"The circumstantial evidence leads to irresistible conclusion that the appellant committed the crime for which she has been convicted," Gidudu said.

He added that the possibility that less money was put in the CIT boxes was excluded by her own admission that she took the money to pay Akello, her creditor.

He therefore, upheld the sentence and sent her back to Luzira.