Onegi Obel jailed over NSSF fraud

Nov 14, 2006

FORMER National Social Security Fund (NSSF) board chairman Geoffrey Onegi Obel was yesterday remanded in Luzira prison for abuse of office.

By Hillary Kiirya
FORMER National Social Security Fund (NSSF) board chairman Geoffrey Onegi Obel was yesterday remanded in Luzira prison for abuse of office.
Onegi was also charged with causing a financial loss of over sh8b in the botched $225m Nsimbe Housing Estate deal.
His co-accused, former NSSF managing director Leonard Mpuuma, former gender, labour and social development minister Zoe Bakoko Bakoru and James Isabirye, the chief of Mugoya Construction Company, were summoned to appear on November 30 to plead to the charges.
Mpuuma was also charged with abuse of office and causing financial loss. Bakoko faces one count of abuse of office for approving a wrong company to go into a joint venture with NSSF.
Isabirye, commonly known as Mugoya, was charged with giving Mpuuma $350,000 (sh637m) to induce him to use his postition to irregularly award him the joint venture with NSSF.
Prosecution led by assistant director of Public Prosecution Michael Wamasebu told Buganda Road Court chief magistrate Margaret Tibulya that the accused committed the offence between 2003 and 2005.
Wamasebu said between 2003 and 2005, Obel and Mpuuma formed an illegal private business entity known as Premier Limited to arbitrarily and preferentially go into a joint venture known as Mugoya Estates Ltd.
He added that the illegal venture made NSSF pay an equity contribution of sh8b in violation of the NSSF Act.
The prosecution contended that the two went into the venture without subjecting it to competitive pre-qualification and without carrying out any feasibility study to assess its security and profitability.
Onegi denied the charges. His lawyers, Muzamiru Kibeedi and James Akampumuza, had objected to the decision by the state to prosecute their client but they were overruled.
They had said there was a High Court standing order for the state not to implement the Auditor General’s report on NSSF but the magistrate said the charge sheet did not mention the report.
She remanded Onegi until November 30 and advised him to apply for bail in the High Court, saying she did not have jurisdiction over the case.
Onegi is the presidential adviser on African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA).
In November 2004, The New Vision broke the story of NSSF inflating the Nsimbe housing estate deal by over sh4b.
Quoting the Auditor General’s report, the paper revealed that there was gross mismanagement of NSSF funds in unviable ventures.
The Government valued the 843 acres at Nsimbe at sh4.5b, as opposed to sh8.5b agreed on by the parties. Consequently, in January 2005, the Police questioned Onegi over the money and the file has since been with the DPP.
Onegi went to court requesting that the report be quashed, arguing that it contravened the laws of natural justice.
He said as chairman of the board of directors then, he was neither given the draft nor the final copy of the report, contrary to natural justice and standard audit procedures.
Later in May 2005, Parliament recommended that Bakoko and the NSSF managers be prosecuted for the financial loss caused to the Government.
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