Chopper Suppliers Were Fake – Probe

By Anne Mugisa, Alfred Wasike And Milton Olupot THE men who sold the queried helicopter gunships to Uganda were fraudsters whom the Defence officials chose to deal with instead of the manufacturer, Justice Julia Ssebutinde said yesterday. The commission probing the procurement of the helicopters heard that Consolidated Sales Corporation (CSC) lied to President Yoweri Museveni on the specifications of the aircraft. Former Army Commander Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu and the Permanent Secretary in the President's Office, Ben Mbonye, appeared before the commission. They testified that the technical team from the Ministry of Defence found the helicopters were not overhauled. They said some components were missing. They said the suppliers later said they could provide the missing components separately. Mbonye said certain difficulties prevented Defence officials from dealing directly with Belaspelsuneshtechnika (BT), the Belarussian government Corporation which manufactured the aircraft. But Ssebutinde said, "The difficulties were not with BT. The difficulties were with these fraudsters, CSC, which put road blocks in the way, which we feel our Ministry of Defence could have overcome. You were very happy to continue dealing with these fraudsters." Mbonye and Muntu, however, said there was very limited time which could not allow meticulous vetting of the process. Mbonye said every time the Defence team went to Belarus, they were taken by CSC and could not therefore access the manufacturers independently. "Could it be that dealing directly with BT, would cut out a lot of people with their commission?" Ssebutinde asked. Muntu said the findings of the Defence technical team were communicated to Museveni. He said Col. Joshua Masaba, who headed the technical team to Belarus found that the helicopters were manufactured between 1981 and 1986. Museveni had said they should have been manufactured in 1988 or later. Mbonye admitted that the defence ministry knew they were dealing with middlemen but did not know they were fraudsters. He said they claimed they were in a joint venture with Triton SAL, though he never saw any documents to support this. Mbonye said CSC fed Museveni with false information regarding the helicopters, including the pricing. He said he later discovered that BT sold the choppers to CSC before it sold them to Uganda. He said he could not remember how much it was but promised to avail the documents to the commission. Mbonye also said they had difficulties getting this information from BT. He said they only managed to get it when problems cropped up over the helicopter. (See verbatim in National Section) Ends