MPs question Mbabazi
Sep 29, 2008
Security minister Amama Mbabazi appreared for the second time last week before MPs investigating whether he used his position to sell land in Temangalo to NSSF.
Security minister Amama Mbabazi appreared for the second time last week before MPs investigating whether he used his position to sell land in Temangalo to NSSF.
Continued from : HERE
Below is the last part of his testimony:
Simon Tolit: The transaction was between Arma and NSSF; under what authority as a person did he (Mbabazi) receive that money and not in the account of Arma Ltd?
Mbabazi: I didn’t.
Tolit: The money was received on a joint account of you and Nzeyi.
Mbabazi: A joint account and my account are different. We received money on a joint account because that was agreed between the purchasers and the sellers.
Tolit: Don’t you think that Arma can sue Amos Nzeyi who they gave their power of attorney. The money has not reached the company.
Mbabazi: Giving powers of attorney doesn’t mean that you receive the money.
Tolit: The sale agreement is between Arma not you as a person.
Mbabazi: If Arma was complaining, maybe. I didn’t know that they had asked you to complain.
Tom Butime: I am restraining myself to interrupt and ask questions from Hon. Mbabazi because we have a lead counsel. I am worried that we are overwhelming Hon. Mbabazi by shooting questions from every angle, some of them irrelevant. (Laughter). That causes a problem of coherence. Let us be coherent and give the chance to our lead counsel. When the lead counsel is through, then we can also contribute.
Malinga: Thanks for your guidance. The trouble the members have a lot of information they want to find out. Sometimes Hon. Mbabazi draws members to other interesting issues. Lead counsel…
Katuntu: On the issue we have been discussing, I don’t think we can go further. But it leaves gaps for us to ponder. If we feel it’s Mr. Nzeyi who can clearly explain, then we shall wait for another opportunity.
Mbabazi: Except that Mr. chairman, I will give you that document (addendum). I have asked for it.
Katuntu: You were not part of the negotiations. You didn’t attend the meetings from your own testimony. I would rather we have a person who signed it or attended negotiations because if there are contradictions in that document, you are going to claim: ‘I wasn’t there’. If there was any extra documents, let’s have them through the signatories. They have the liberty to come or write to us.
And if it was signed by NSSF, we have an opportunity to interview them next week. (An emissary has just brought a copy of the addendum and an aide seated next to Mbabazi passed it over to the minister who is flipping through pages. Katuntu notices).
We can’t receive that document from Hon. Mbabazi.
Having said that…
Mbabazi: I sent for what I thought had been forwarded to the committee from Mr. Nzeyi and he has sent me a copy of a letter addressed to you and of September 22, 2008, forwarding this document to you.
Malinga: Can I look at it?
Mbabazi: Sure (Malinga scrutinizes documents and remarks)
Malinga: It has just arrived through you. It’s not in our records.
Katuntu: There is a problem. Whereas the letter is dated 22nd, I see it’s not even a photocopy. We have never received this letter. It could be in the post office. If we get our letter, we shall respond.
Mbabazi: In light of what Hon. Katuntu says, which I agree with, I cannot answer questions on this and the other ones because these were handled by Mr. Nzeyi. In the interest of getting to the bottom of the facts, why don’t you call him and ask him those questions?
Katuntu: We are concluding our work. We cannot close and open. When Nzeyi was here, he gave us all the documents he thought were relevant. So we are not going to call him. If he so wishes, he can seek audience.
Malinga: Proceed.
Katuntu: In the documents Hon. Mbabazi has given us, I see Appendix 1. It contains bank statements and cheques which are not part of our record. We don’t know where they are coming from and who wrote them. We have been seeing them in the newspapers. We don’t want them to be smuggled into our records. We saw press reports that this committee was summoned to the Police about these cheques. We don’t want to be in possession of forged documents.
Mbabazi: Why don’t you ask Hon. Ssekikuubo:
Katuntu: About?
Mbabazi: About them?
Malinga: The documents?
Katuntu: No! no! no! no! He is not a member of the committee.
Mbabazi: He has been dominant here (laughter).
Katuntu: You mean he has been dominating us as a committee (more laughter). We want these (documents) withdrawn from us. We don’t want forged documents on our committee.
Mbabazi: Can I tell you something about them?
Malinga: We didn’t ask for documents from the National Bank of Commerce. These are not our documents and the Police have been looking for the people who know about these documents (laughter). But you can say what you want.
Mbabazi: I received these documents as an MP (ponders).
Malinga: Of Kinkinzi?
Mbabazi: From my pigeon-hole (boxes from which MPs’ mail is placed in the Parliament lobby).
Malinga: We discuss this as MPs outside here but as a committee, we are not accepting the documents.
Mbabazi: Didn’t you receive it?
Malinga: I didn’t.
Mbabazi: Aaaah!
Malinga: When I was told that ‘you have been summoned to answer queries’ I was here. I have been away for only two days.
Mbabazi: Ask your members who received it (them) because…
Sarah Nyombi: Name them.
Mbabazi: Even Hon. Okupa must have received it.
Okupa: Order! Can the minister name the members of this committee who received this (allegedly forged) cheque and I have heard him mention my name. Can you tender the evidence that you gave me these documents?
Mbabazi: I said I received this as an MP. I thought you, Mr chairman, Hon. Okupa and every member of Parliament, like I did, received it.
Malinga: Honourable Mbabazi?
Okupa: Can you withdraw it?
(Several MPs want to speak and to distance the committee from the documents).
Malinga: Order members!
Mbabazi: If you didn’t receive it, then there was something unusual.
Okupa: Return your books.
Malinga: I have a pigeon-hole and I don’t normally check Hon. Mbabazi’s pigeon-hole. So, I cannot assume whatever he receives. Hon. Mbabazi’s pigeon-hole is not a pool where whichever document he receives goes to the pigeon-hole of members. It was wrong for you to assume because the MP for Kinkinzi received this, therefore, the MP for Kapelebyong received it.
Mbabazi: Maybe your predecessor. I didn’t think this would arise, otherwise I would have come with the evidence. They wrote to the National Bank of Commerce asking for my daughters account. This, I will have another occasion to talk about. You wrote to the bank asking for a statement of my daughter Rachael’s account. On what basis was that letter written?
Malinga: That letter was not given to me as a member of this committee. We shall verify the information that you have given to us but as a committee, this will not be taken as evidence.
Mbabazi: Before you reach that conclusion, you should check your own records because you (committee) wrote asking for statements of my daughter.
Malinga: I said we shall check.
Mbabazi: Then you can say: ‘we didn’t do it, we have never known about this thing’, then make that conclusion because this matter came from this committee.
Katuntu: It can only come from the committee when it was discussed by the committee and appropriate decision taken, and the chairman asked by the committee initiates particular correspondence. If the chairman somehow thought… received it and was trying to investigate, that is another matter. This is not part of our investigation and we don’t want to bulk our record with irrelevant evidence.
Mbabazi: When do we know that the chairman was acting without the authority of the committee?
Katuntu: Can we have a ruling, Mr. chairman, and we proceed?
Malinga: At the moment we have no evidence that John (Odit, the sacked chairman) wrote on behalf of the committee to examine the accounts of your daughter and these documents are not relevant to our investigation and we disown them. Proceed.
Katuntu: Let us go back to the issue of bonafide occupants. Clause 4 (of the sale agreement) says: ‘the vendor hereby covenants and gives the purchase a warrant of title and ownership to and quiet possession of the said land free from encumbrances, squatters, bonafide occupants’.
I ask Hon. Mbabazi whether Arma has given the purchaser (NSSF) quiet possession of the land, free from any bonafide occupants?
Mbabazi: The attorney would answer that because he has not come to me to say he had any problem.
Katuntu: I don’t know if you get my question: Have you handed over quiet possession of this land to the purchaser, free from any bonafide occupants?
Mbabazi: My attention had been blown away but I know the paragraph Hon. Katuntu is reading which I raised myself last time and talked about earlier on. It says the seller undertakes to give the land sold free from encumbrances and to make good any breach of those warranties. This covers the concerns raised about lawful occupants of land on Plot 35. I said it will not be a concern. In the media what was hyped was a falsehood; that there are sixty families on this land and that the place was occupied by squatters. We said the four or five acres occupied by lawful occupants would be provided to the purchaser free of occupation. We undertook this and will handle it in due time.
Katuntu: I can even tell you the reason we are asking you this question. We have received a petition from occupants on this land, they are seeking audience with this committee.
Mbabazi: Give them audience, please.
Katuntu: That decision is ours and we shall take it either way. You said this matter will be handled in due course, when is due course? You were supposed to have handed over quiet possession of the land on execution of this presence as we say in law. And it looks as we talk now parts of this land are still encumbered with bonafide occupants.
Mbabazi: Ummmh! When you read this paragraph, it anticipates the possibility.....
Katuntu: Of you breaching?
Mbabazi: There being lawful occupants.
Katuntu: Of you breaching?
Continued from : HERE
Below is the last part of his testimony:
Simon Tolit: The transaction was between Arma and NSSF; under what authority as a person did he (Mbabazi) receive that money and not in the account of Arma Ltd?
Mbabazi: I didn’t.
Tolit: The money was received on a joint account of you and Nzeyi.
Mbabazi: A joint account and my account are different. We received money on a joint account because that was agreed between the purchasers and the sellers.
Tolit: Don’t you think that Arma can sue Amos Nzeyi who they gave their power of attorney. The money has not reached the company.
Mbabazi: Giving powers of attorney doesn’t mean that you receive the money.
Tolit: The sale agreement is between Arma not you as a person.
Mbabazi: If Arma was complaining, maybe. I didn’t know that they had asked you to complain.
Tom Butime: I am restraining myself to interrupt and ask questions from Hon. Mbabazi because we have a lead counsel. I am worried that we are overwhelming Hon. Mbabazi by shooting questions from every angle, some of them irrelevant. (Laughter). That causes a problem of coherence. Let us be coherent and give the chance to our lead counsel. When the lead counsel is through, then we can also contribute.
Malinga: Thanks for your guidance. The trouble the members have a lot of information they want to find out. Sometimes Hon. Mbabazi draws members to other interesting issues. Lead counsel…
Katuntu: On the issue we have been discussing, I don’t think we can go further. But it leaves gaps for us to ponder. If we feel it’s Mr. Nzeyi who can clearly explain, then we shall wait for another opportunity.
Mbabazi: Except that Mr. chairman, I will give you that document (addendum). I have asked for it.
Katuntu: You were not part of the negotiations. You didn’t attend the meetings from your own testimony. I would rather we have a person who signed it or attended negotiations because if there are contradictions in that document, you are going to claim: ‘I wasn’t there’. If there was any extra documents, let’s have them through the signatories. They have the liberty to come or write to us.
And if it was signed by NSSF, we have an opportunity to interview them next week. (An emissary has just brought a copy of the addendum and an aide seated next to Mbabazi passed it over to the minister who is flipping through pages. Katuntu notices).
We can’t receive that document from Hon. Mbabazi.
Having said that…
Mbabazi: I sent for what I thought had been forwarded to the committee from Mr. Nzeyi and he has sent me a copy of a letter addressed to you and of September 22, 2008, forwarding this document to you.
Malinga: Can I look at it?
Mbabazi: Sure (Malinga scrutinizes documents and remarks)
Malinga: It has just arrived through you. It’s not in our records.
Katuntu: There is a problem. Whereas the letter is dated 22nd, I see it’s not even a photocopy. We have never received this letter. It could be in the post office. If we get our letter, we shall respond.
Mbabazi: In light of what Hon. Katuntu says, which I agree with, I cannot answer questions on this and the other ones because these were handled by Mr. Nzeyi. In the interest of getting to the bottom of the facts, why don’t you call him and ask him those questions?
Katuntu: We are concluding our work. We cannot close and open. When Nzeyi was here, he gave us all the documents he thought were relevant. So we are not going to call him. If he so wishes, he can seek audience.
Malinga: Proceed.
Katuntu: In the documents Hon. Mbabazi has given us, I see Appendix 1. It contains bank statements and cheques which are not part of our record. We don’t know where they are coming from and who wrote them. We have been seeing them in the newspapers. We don’t want them to be smuggled into our records. We saw press reports that this committee was summoned to the Police about these cheques. We don’t want to be in possession of forged documents.
Mbabazi: Why don’t you ask Hon. Ssekikuubo:
Katuntu: About?
Mbabazi: About them?
Malinga: The documents?
Katuntu: No! no! no! no! He is not a member of the committee.
Mbabazi: He has been dominant here (laughter).
Katuntu: You mean he has been dominating us as a committee (more laughter). We want these (documents) withdrawn from us. We don’t want forged documents on our committee.
Mbabazi: Can I tell you something about them?
Malinga: We didn’t ask for documents from the National Bank of Commerce. These are not our documents and the Police have been looking for the people who know about these documents (laughter). But you can say what you want.
Mbabazi: I received these documents as an MP (ponders).
Malinga: Of Kinkinzi?
Mbabazi: From my pigeon-hole (boxes from which MPs’ mail is placed in the Parliament lobby).
Malinga: We discuss this as MPs outside here but as a committee, we are not accepting the documents.
Mbabazi: Didn’t you receive it?
Malinga: I didn’t.
Mbabazi: Aaaah!
Malinga: When I was told that ‘you have been summoned to answer queries’ I was here. I have been away for only two days.
Mbabazi: Ask your members who received it (them) because…
Sarah Nyombi: Name them.
Mbabazi: Even Hon. Okupa must have received it.
Okupa: Order! Can the minister name the members of this committee who received this (allegedly forged) cheque and I have heard him mention my name. Can you tender the evidence that you gave me these documents?
Mbabazi: I said I received this as an MP. I thought you, Mr chairman, Hon. Okupa and every member of Parliament, like I did, received it.
Malinga: Honourable Mbabazi?
Okupa: Can you withdraw it?
(Several MPs want to speak and to distance the committee from the documents).
Malinga: Order members!
Mbabazi: If you didn’t receive it, then there was something unusual.
Okupa: Return your books.
Malinga: I have a pigeon-hole and I don’t normally check Hon. Mbabazi’s pigeon-hole. So, I cannot assume whatever he receives. Hon. Mbabazi’s pigeon-hole is not a pool where whichever document he receives goes to the pigeon-hole of members. It was wrong for you to assume because the MP for Kinkinzi received this, therefore, the MP for Kapelebyong received it.
Mbabazi: Maybe your predecessor. I didn’t think this would arise, otherwise I would have come with the evidence. They wrote to the National Bank of Commerce asking for my daughters account. This, I will have another occasion to talk about. You wrote to the bank asking for a statement of my daughter Rachael’s account. On what basis was that letter written?
Malinga: That letter was not given to me as a member of this committee. We shall verify the information that you have given to us but as a committee, this will not be taken as evidence.
Mbabazi: Before you reach that conclusion, you should check your own records because you (committee) wrote asking for statements of my daughter.
Malinga: I said we shall check.
Mbabazi: Then you can say: ‘we didn’t do it, we have never known about this thing’, then make that conclusion because this matter came from this committee.
Katuntu: It can only come from the committee when it was discussed by the committee and appropriate decision taken, and the chairman asked by the committee initiates particular correspondence. If the chairman somehow thought… received it and was trying to investigate, that is another matter. This is not part of our investigation and we don’t want to bulk our record with irrelevant evidence.
Mbabazi: When do we know that the chairman was acting without the authority of the committee?
Katuntu: Can we have a ruling, Mr. chairman, and we proceed?
Malinga: At the moment we have no evidence that John (Odit, the sacked chairman) wrote on behalf of the committee to examine the accounts of your daughter and these documents are not relevant to our investigation and we disown them. Proceed.
Katuntu: Let us go back to the issue of bonafide occupants. Clause 4 (of the sale agreement) says: ‘the vendor hereby covenants and gives the purchase a warrant of title and ownership to and quiet possession of the said land free from encumbrances, squatters, bonafide occupants’.
I ask Hon. Mbabazi whether Arma has given the purchaser (NSSF) quiet possession of the land, free from any bonafide occupants?
Mbabazi: The attorney would answer that because he has not come to me to say he had any problem.
Katuntu: I don’t know if you get my question: Have you handed over quiet possession of this land to the purchaser, free from any bonafide occupants?
Mbabazi: My attention had been blown away but I know the paragraph Hon. Katuntu is reading which I raised myself last time and talked about earlier on. It says the seller undertakes to give the land sold free from encumbrances and to make good any breach of those warranties. This covers the concerns raised about lawful occupants of land on Plot 35. I said it will not be a concern. In the media what was hyped was a falsehood; that there are sixty families on this land and that the place was occupied by squatters. We said the four or five acres occupied by lawful occupants would be provided to the purchaser free of occupation. We undertook this and will handle it in due time.
Katuntu: I can even tell you the reason we are asking you this question. We have received a petition from occupants on this land, they are seeking audience with this committee.
Mbabazi: Give them audience, please.
Katuntu: That decision is ours and we shall take it either way. You said this matter will be handled in due course, when is due course? You were supposed to have handed over quiet possession of the land on execution of this presence as we say in law. And it looks as we talk now parts of this land are still encumbered with bonafide occupants.
Mbabazi: Ummmh! When you read this paragraph, it anticipates the possibility.....
Katuntu: Of you breaching?
Mbabazi: There being lawful occupants.
Katuntu: Of you breaching?