Judiciary depositing funds on personal accounts
Jul 02, 2019
According to lawmakers sitting on the Public Accounts Committee, the practice exposes the judiciary to loss of funds to unscrupulous technocrats prone to cooking books.
ACCOUNTABILITY
The top echelon of Uganda's judiciary earlier today came under scrutiny for the continued depositing of colossal sums of money on personal accounts of civil servants.
According to lawmakers sitting on the Public Accounts Committee, the practice exposes the judiciary to loss of funds to unscrupulous technocrats prone to cooking books.
According to Judiciary's Chief Registrar, Esta Nambayo, the entity deposits funds on the personal accounts of Grade II, Grade I, Chief Magistrates and Registrars' accounts to help them execute duties directly under their ambits.
The revelation comes at a time when the top brass of ministry of finance had drawn a line under the practice following admission that the grand fraud in the Office of the Prime Minister in 2012 during Geoffrey Kazinda's tenure as accountant was partly possible because of this practice.
"Depositing sh100m on an account of an officer earning sh3m a month is tempting. That officer can easily divert funds to personal use or gets a loan of sh600m claiming that he earns sh100m salary a month," committee chairperson, Nandala Mafabi said.
However, citing a letter written by the Accountant General, Lawrence Semakula dated 17th December 2018, Nambayo told legislators that Judiciary received the requisite waiver for a practice that MPs Florence Namayanja and committee vice chairperson, Okin Ojara described as risky.
In the said letter, Semakula noted that funds meant for activities such as workshop facilitation and any other one-off payments can be effected through depositing funds in the personal bank accounts of technocrats.
"We got the requisite waiver. We could have done so without it," Nambayo said.
In 2012, a scandal involving funds largely meant for refugee activities engulfed the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
But one common thread regarding the pilfering of funds revolved around colossal sums being deposited on the personal accounts of technocrats tasked to execute given duties.
Accounting for such funds became a problem for many technocrats leading to interdiction and loss of jobs for some.