More officials who bagged millions for photocopying, filing named

Officials from the Ministry of Energy led by minister Irene Muloni (right) before Parliament’s Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises on Friday. PHOTO BY ERIC DOMIIC BUKENYA

What you need to know:

  • Six officials from the Energy ministry led by minister Irene Muloni appeared before the Parliament probe committee on Friday to explain what role they played to merit reward. The committee heard that the officials were paid for work they ordinarily do in their normal course of work like photocopying and filing documents. Solomon Arinaitwe relays what transpired.

Ernest Rubondo (commissioner petroleum, exploration and production): My participation can largely be summarised in three aspects; one was supporting the team which was led by the Attorney General’s office in the aspect of Heritage not being able to leave the country before paying tax.
There was a possibility that heritage would exit the country before paying tax and there were many proponents of this move; internal and external and so I contributed to the aspect that they should not be allowed to leave the country without paying taxes.
Abdu Katuntu (Cosase chair): What was your role? When you say Heritage leaving the country, what do you mean and how did you stop them from leaving the country?
Rubondo: At that time I was the commissioner and I played the role of chief technical adviser to government on oil and gas matters. I recall that Heritage had applied to sell its assets in the country to Tullow oil and it was not applying to sell part of them but all of them. And if it sold all of them, it would leave the country. That is what I meant when I said Heritage was planning to leave the country.
Katuntu: You said you participated in stopping Heritage from leaving the country. Can you tell us what you did?
Rubondo: They applied to the minister to be allowed to sell and go. The minister through his technical department which I was leading had to evaluate whether it could do that. And as head of that department, I needed to advise the minister, whether they could leave and if they could not leave, what were the issues that could not allow them to leave. We did inform the minister the aspects that needed to be considered before they leave. And these were several, ensuring compliance, ensuring who was taking over, ensuring that URA is satisfied with their tax position. And those are the issues that I advised the minister on.
Katuntu: Farm down was supposed to take place with the approval of government according to PSAs. So you are not saying anything new. There could only be a farm down with the approval of government and to get the approval of government, you must have been compliant?
Rubondo: Very true.
Katuntu: I must say that should have been your ordinary job?
Rubondo: True. You asked me what was my role in this and that’s what I was explaining.
Katuntu: That was the ordinary role of a commissioner to advise his minister that these people should farm down after having complied with the PSA?
Rubondo: On the face of it, that’s correct. But the truth of the matter is that it had not happened in the country a lot. The circumstances under how decisions are taken on situations like that. So we did have to benchmark.
Katuntu: I thought that by the time you signed the PSAs, you had envisaged that otherwise you would not put that clause that Heritage to farm down, they needed the authority of the minister.
Rubondo: The point I was making is my role in that. How does the minister give and not give that authority. Those aspects were relatively new in this country.
Katuntu: Compliance was relatively new?
Rubondo: The documentation that they needed to ensure was in place before they leave, the financial obligations which included tax and how they had to be dealt with. We did benchmark and asked how the different countries were handling this. The advice we were receiving did not point to the fact that the matter was that straightforward.
Katuntu: Did it have any of those aspects you are talking about?
Rubondo: The company come and said government come and unreasonably held the consent. We had to demonstrate that the reasons they did not get the consent were part of themselves.
Katuntu: I thought the major issue why the ministry could not give out the consent was because of the Capital Gains Tax
Rubondo: That is that the matter Hon Chairman but the matter is that it was more than that.
Katuntu: Tell us
Rubondo: One of the aspects that we had to ensure was the compliance, that this company may have complied to everything they were supposed to during the time that they were here. And we found out that that was not the case. The other aspect is that the government needed to be aware that what would be next after they had left. They were partners to Tullow Oil and if they left and sold to Tullow Oil, it meant that Tullow Oil was going to be alone. These were two licences. The third license was also owned by Tullow. The government would have a situation of three licenses owned by Tullow and this is a situation that we thought was not good.
Katuntu: In those three roles, do you find anything extraordinary other than your normal duties as a commissioner?
Rubondo: The aspect of being a witness in the court was extremely…
Katuntu: And remember you have told us that you were a factual witness. And a factual witness is somebody who sys this happened about facts. What was extraordinary about being a factual witness?
Rubondo: Generally, that is the case but it is an oversimplification.
Katuntu: Can you complicate it for us since I have oversimplified it?
Rubondo: The case that we were dealing with had aspects that we had dealt with many years ago.
Katuntu: Are they within your knowledge? Were they in the records within?
Rubondo: We had to identify which facts are relevant. The aspect of identifying relevant taxes is a process.
Katuntu: Just give us the picture. We were not there and we want to see how complicated this case was.
Rubondo: Most of the facts they were presenting were in the custody of the department. And we had to put the facts on the table to see which ones were relevant or were not useful and which ones were not. We thought and we did have an extra duty of digging out the information. This is the extent we had to go to. The second information was that this information was not on the commissioner’s shelf or in the registry so we had to go to the archives.
Katuntu: Archives is the store. There is nothing extraordinary about picking information from the archives.
Rubondo: I hope the committee will have time to visit the archives because then you will discover that that it was an effort. Without dragging the committee, I felt that this was an effort.

Next witness
Alex Nyombi: My name is Alex Nyombi. I was working as a geophysicist in the Energy ministry. I joined in 2003. I was seconded by my ministry to be part of the core team. I started working on this matter from when Heritage applied for consent. On the team I participated in preparation of government submissions on all stages. I also supported my commissioner who was a factual witness. I participated in doing due diligence on the companies which had been proposed to take over Heritage. I also participated as a subject matter expert on a daily basis.
Katuntu: You acted as an expert witness? Do you have any expert documents, proposal witness? Do you have any written opinion about those issues you are talking about?
Nyombi: No.
Moses Kasibante (Rubaga North MP): How many witnesses did you have and at what stage did you hand over to the lawyers?
Nyombi: When you look at the submissions made in the Tax Appeals Tribunal and in the court, the exhibits attached. Some of these documents are decades old. You have these so many documents and you are looking for a particular document. That’s what I am talking about.
Kasibante: Are there instances in your normal duties where you have to look for documents? Give a “yes” or “no” answer
Nyombi: It depends on the context. We have never referred to documents that are 20 years old. Never to documents that were signed in the 80s.
Katuntu: The point here is that you look for documents in your day today work. The only difference is that you were looking for old documents.

Next witness
Honey Malinga: I joined the ministry in 1992. My role is quite long. When this case started in 2009, as assistant commissioner, there are things which we were monitoring in the data centre. One, before Eni came, Tullow was interested. The issue came up when Tullow pre-empted, when it came to taxes, we referred that matter to URA, Finance and Energy. In mid-June 2010, it’s when Heritage said we are going to Tax Appeal Tribunal. That’s the day they said government should form a team to defend this case. In May 2011, it took us as Heritage vs. Uganda. That’s how I started getting more involved. It necessitated us looking for more documents.
Katuntu: What documents did you prepare?
Malinga: The necessary correspondences
Katuntu: What documents, please? For me to appreciate your argument, you have to tell me the documents you prepared.
Malinga: One witness statement.
Katuntu: Let me tell you about this thing of attending meetings up to late. When we were doing the upstream, midstream and downstream law. Mr Nyombi, do you know the meetings we held? Do you know the time they ended? You know when we had meetings in your boardroom; do you know the time they ended? We have done these things before but these are normal things we do in our normal course of duties. There is nothing extraordinary about these things. We go through them because we are doing these jobs for the public good.
Katuntu: How much money did you get?
Malinga: Shs124.1m
Katuntu: What did the highest get? I think 200 something
Malinga: There was the issue of taxation and after taxation, it got to Shs121m.
Katuntu: So you got the other one?
Malinga: Yes. I was the core [among category beneficiaries that pocketed Shs200m]. For five years, I was in the system.
Katuntu: Shs132m was the highest I think.
Rubondo: I got Shs120m.
Katuntu: We are also looking at the fairness of this. Don’t you think that there were other civil servants who were part of this in this process and they went away without being paid in the ministry?
Rubondo: The people who got are here and they played a supportive role. In choosing these people, we thought we had chosen the people who had been consistently in this process. Along the way, you could get someone who would make a contribution in one meeting or would carry a file at some point but they were not consistently in this process up to the end.
Katuntu: We have seen an officer in another department who was around for only a few months, left the job and is on the list
Rubondo: Not in our ministry and so we cannot explain for that one. But in our ministry we tried to identify the people who consistently contributed to this process and they are the ones we have identified.
Katuntu: Really, are we talking about the three of you? The three of you are the only ones who handled this matter?
Rubondo: When you talk like that, you are being really very definitive. There are people who occasionally come in one of the meetings and contribute a document, but because they were not consistently apart of this….
Katuntu: They did not deserve a reward?
Rubondo: Of course the reward was not given by me.
Katuntu: They did not deserve a reward?
Rubondo: Since I did not give the reward, I cannot comment on that one.
Katuntu: Who deserved a reward and who did not deserve?
Rubondo: I contributed the names of those who consistently participated in the process.
Jenipher Mbabazi [Kagadi Woman MP]: I would like to know who by the time was responsible to designate roles for which particular person on this assignment?
Rubondo: On this particular case, we must admit that the assignment of the two officers that joined the team which was led by the AG’s chambers was done in consultation with the permanent secretary because these are officers who were being sent on an assignment which was led by another ministry.
Katuntu: As a former commissioner in the ministry of Energy, do you find it strange that your reward came from URA accounts?
Rubondo: I did not find it strange because this matter was being handled by both the AG’s chambers and URA.
Katuntu: Do you find it strange that it came from URA? And before you answer, satisfy yourself because you have been a senior civil servant and you know about budgeting processes?
Rubondo: The achievement was winning a tax case and from that point of view. I did not find it strange that the reward came from the authority, because that is the institution representing government of Uganda that was the beneficiary of our efforts.
Katuntu: Mr Nyombi, you referred to the meeting at the country home of the President. What was the subject of that meeting?
Nyombi: The subject of the meeting was discussing a Tullow matter.
Katuntu: Did you discuss the reward in that meeting?
Nyombi: What I seem to recall is the CG URA being told to compile a reward.
Katuntu: Did your team request for the reward?
Nyombi: No. I do not recall that.
Katuntu: So how did it come up?
Nyombi: As a subject of discussion?
Katuntu: Yes.
Nyombi: I do not to seem to recall.
Katuntu: We are interested in that meeting and you have referred to it and some people have referred to it before?
Nyombi: I do not recall how this matter came up specifically, but I recall His Excellency…
Katuntu: But you see if you cannot recall that, you are recalling what we are not asking you? Recall what we are asking you!
Nyombi: I cannot recall how it came up but it came up.
Katuntu: You cannot recall how the issue of being rewarded these millions of Shillings that we are talking about came up?
Nyombi: This is 2017. It was nearly two years ago. I cannot recall.
Katuntu: How did this issue come up? How did it get on the agenda?
Nyombi: I was not in charge of the agenda.
Katuntu: I am asking you a very simple question. You attended this meeting from which you were going to benefit very handsomely. Because I am imagining, if I get Shs900,0000 and all of a sudden I am going to get Shs120m, it is not something I would not even remember how it came about under any circumstances?
Nyombi: I am sorry I cannot recall how the subject came about. I do recall it was discussed but I cannot recall how exactly it came about. I do not know what else I can say to satisfy you.
Katuntu: No, you are not satisfying us. We just want to know. And the records are going to show that Mr Nyombi does not recall how this issue came up. And now we have to retake a decision on whether to believe you and that is my biggest problem. And I want to believe you so I want you to help me believe you. There is someone who is going to judge this report who is not here. And I must try to explain that Mr Nyombi was being honest. He told us the truth.
Nyombi: This is an issue that happened two years ago and I do not remember how it came up.
Katuntu: What can we do? That’s the record. We shall have a decision on it somehow.

Next witness
Mbabazi: My name is Joyce Mbabazi. I come from the ministry of Energy. I am a record assistant in the Petroleum Directorate. My work is to manage records and information flow in the department. My role in this case was to search for records that were being asked by the government team. Ministry of Justice would request, our team would also identify and request and sometimes URA would identify and request and they would give me.
Katuntu: Were you in those meetings where they would identify?
Mbabazi: No.
Katuntu: Just tell what you know. Forget about what happened in the Ministry of Justice. You are a records assistant in the petroleum department. Tell us about your role there.
Mbabazi: That is what I am saying. Our representatives in the department would tell me to look for documents that had been requested for by ministry of Finance or Solicitor General’s office and I would go to the records centre and look for them and extract them.
Katuntu: Extract! You see, if they told you to use those words, they are going to cause problems for you. We all know who a records assistant is. When your boss says can I have this document, you go in your data, archives or cabinet and pick the document and give it to him. Is there any other work you did part from this?
Mbabazi: There was also preparing these documents in the way they wanted them.
Katuntu: What is this preparation the way they wanted them?
Mbabazi: Photocopying them. Because we could not allow them to take the original
Katuntu: Is there any other instance where your boss tells you to photocopy documents for him in your normal course of duties? Don’t they ask you to go and photocopy?
Mbabazi: No. I usually do not photocopy.
Katuntu: So photocopying was the something special in this case.
Mbabazi: Because we were assigned these duties only two.
Katuntu: You as the records assistant, there are no circumstances where your boss requires you to photocopy?
Mbabazi: They can require me to have them photocopied.
Katuntu: Is there anything you want to tell us, to say that this was something special that I do not do ordinarily.
Mbabazi: Something special was that I used to leave office at night. On weekends, I come very early in the morning and leave at night.
Katuntu: Just to do that? To photocopy?
Mbabazi: Not just to photocopy, but to look for the files.
Katuntu: Do you have an organised filing system?
Mbabazi: Yes. But the timelines they used to request for the files. They could say that this one is needed in London by 2pm today. I would spend more time to ensure that they are ready.
Katuntu: How much money did you get?
Mbabazi: Shs35 million.
Katuntu: How much is your salary?
Mbabazi: Shs680.000.
Kasibante: You look to be providing very factual information to this committee. I understand you are the best placed person in that ministry to provide documents. But now, even commissioners claim that they had to come in and dig out documents. Does it mean that you had failed on your part?
Mbabazi: When it necessitated, yes. Because I would carry like 10 volumes of files, I place them for him there as I continue with other volumes because of the timelines as I have said.

Next Witness
Moses Ekunu: My name is Moses Ekunu. I am a personal secretary, special grade in the ministry of Energy, petroleum department. I joined that office in January 2011 as a personal secretary to the commissioner petroleum, exploration and production. My role involved searching for documents. If you come to our office, we have an archives centre which has almost 5,000 files.
Katuntu: All ministries do.
Ekunu: That is where we were going to search for the documents. For each meeting attended in the country and outside, we would be required to produce a document.
Katuntu: Does that centre have someone who mans it?
Ekunu: Ms Mbabazi runs it.
Katuntu: So you should know where all these documents are anyway?
Ekunu: We are yet to have a system of identifying these documents? My other part was that once these documents are identified, there is need to compile them into this kind of format. My other role was compiling them into this kind of format.
Katuntu: The issue is filing. You get a file and put them there!
Ekunu: Our understanding of filing is that when you file a document, it has to go to the file cover. This one was compilation which was not necessarily filing but compilation.
Katuntu: What is the difference?
Ekunu: The difference with is that with compilation, you might not be necessarily filing. My third role was digitalising the documents.
Cuthbert Mirembe [Kagadi County MP]: If you had a choice, there are many ways of rewarding. Between cash, medals and recognition, what would have been your most preferred reward mechanism?
Malinga: First, I have ever got a reward in 2006 for participating in the discovery of oil. I am aware that when this award was announced, Cabinet was informed, they thanked the team.
Katuntu: Were you there?
Malinga: No, but I was told.
Katuntu: Mr Nyombi will tell you that that is hearsay.
Malinga: Through the former AG Peter Nyombi, he told us that when this award was announced on the floor of Parliament, the Speaker wrote…
Katuntu: Were you there?
Malinga: I was told.
Katuntu: Leave that alone.
Malinga: So those are different
Katuntu: They might have screwed you on the issue of the Speaker’s letter but let me explain; when you came from London, Mr Nyombi wrote to the Speaker. I know the contents and the Speaker replied to that letter. You jump to the contents of that letter without referring to Nyombi’s letter. You are team leader and that is where the problem is. Let me ask you as civil servants, would it be correct for civil servants to solicit for a reward?
Malinga: No.
Rubondo: The word solicit is what we need to agree on. To go and say give me something because I have done this is not correct. But I think there is also nothing wrong to say that what I have done is beyond my normal work. Because there are circumstances where your supervisor, or other people, may not know that you have gone extra lengths to deliver a certain subject. As to whether a statement like that would also amount to soliciting, I do not know. But I think to me it’s okay for someone to go to his supervisor and say in doing this, I went an extra mile.
Katuntu: In doing this, what is it that you did that you should not have done?
Rubondo: In my opinion, the whole aspect of being a witness.
Katuntu: Who would have been a witness if the commissioner did not want to be a witness?
Rubondo: Anybody could have been a witness. The accounting officer could have been a witness. The minister could have been a witness…
Katuntu: But you are the one who had the information. You were asked to give the facts as you know and you think that was so special. You should not have done it?
Rubondo: I have answered that for me that was special. I did not expect it. But also secondly is the volume of work added to the normal work that we used to do. I have to say this because when I heard the discussion with the support people, I thought it was underestimated. You asked whether what they did was different from what they do in the normal course of their work. And in their answers, it was clear that the roles they did were similar to the ones they usually do. But I would like the committee to know that we rarely bombarded these people with a lot of extra work which they needed to do at short time. And during that time, they never stopped their work.
Katuntu: Looking for files and compiling documents?
Rubondo: Digitising them and compiling them.
Kasibante: What you did Mr Rubondo, was it extra work or you did your job well?
Rubondo: Both.
Katuntu: The contest about taxation, did it arise from the PSA?
Rubondo: Taxation is in accordance with the tax laws.
Katuntu: Was there an issue about tax in the PSAs?
Rubondo: I don’t recall an issue of the tax in the PSAs.
Katuntu: In the PSAs? And you are well versed with this case and it was never an issue?
Rubondo: In this case, not that I became aware of but the AG may have known.
Katuntu: Did any of your ministers try to exempt taxation?
Rubondo: None of my ministers tried to exempt tax because the matter of tax…
Katuntu: Are you sure because we are going to look at the records. Did any of your ministers, and I am sure on your advice, try to exempt Heritage from tax because you are the chief technical adviser and the minister could not have tried without your advice?
Rubondo: When you say on my advice, you enable me to advise very strongly. I have never advised a minister to exempt tax.
Katuntu: Was there a circumstance where the minister exempted Heritage?
Rubondo: Not that I recall and neither would I expect it.
Katuntu: Okay. The next meeting, we will be looking at that question and we will be looking at documents to answer it. Hon minister, would you like to say something? Tell us what your role was and how much did you receive?
Muloni: When the issue came up, we contacted the AG to take up the matter. As a minister and a person, I did not receive any handshake. My interest was to have government win the case and I am happy that we won.
Katuntu: Would you find it correct for civil servants in your ministry to solicit rewards for work done? I am talking about it in a hypothetical way.
Muloni: It would not be correct.
Katuntu: On that point, we bring this meeting to an end.