Corrupt officials threaten me - IGG
The Inspector General of Government (IGG), Ms Irene Mulyagonja. FILE PHOTO
What you need to know:
- Internal threats. Justice Mulyagonja says some of her colleagues from other institutions threaten her to stop carrying out prosecutions.
- "It is a year since investigations against him[ university professor] commenced. He had refused to give us the information we wanted and because we had issued several summons for him to bring us certain documents and he refused, I issued an arrest warrant to have him arrested. He ran to a ‘political friend’ who wrote a letter threatening the IGG,” Irene Mulyagonja, Inspector General of Government
KAMPALA. The Inspector General of Government (IGG), Ms Irene Mulyagonja, has said she receives threats from high-profile corrupt officials who are under investigation.
Ms Mulyagonja made the revelation while addressing a European Union delegation who visited her at the IGG regional office in Jinja District on Monday to share information on Uganda’s investigation and prosecution of corrupt government officials.
“I get intimidated and sometimes the intimidation is from colleagues from other institutions trying to stop me from carrying out prosecutions,” Justice Mulyagonja said.
She said the corrupt officials also threaten her staff.
Without mentioning any names, Ms Mulyagonja cited a university professor whom she said is under investigation but has ‘on several occasions’ used politicians and other people to threaten her.
“It is a year since investigations against him[ university professor] commenced. He had refused to give us the information we wanted and because we had issued several summons for him to bring us certain documents and he refused, I issued an arrest warrant to have him arrested. He ran to a ‘political friend’ who wrote a letter threatening the IGG,” Justice Mulyagonja said.
“The letter was addressed to the President, but in a way of threatening me not to investigate this professor…. I was not shaken but again, I received another letter from his lawyers also intimidating me,” she added.
The IGG said although government protects her from such threats, it is God who protects her most.
Similar threats
The director of IGG regional office in Jinja, Mr Polly Muhairwe, said he too received threats from an army officer.
“I was in the field investigating and got a phone call from someone who said he was a Lieutenant General and senior minister in the country. He said: ‘I have just received information that you’re investigating me. May I know who you are? How can you dare investigate me?’ The following day, I had information that he had instructed the district police commander to have me arrested,” Mr Muhairwe said.
The head of cooperation at the Netherlands Embassy in Kampala, Mr Joris Van Bommel, encouraged the IGG to prosecute those who threaten her because the threats can turn dangerous.
In 2015, a senior principal State Attorney, Joan Kagezi, was shot dead by assailants who had been trailing her on a boda boda.
At the time she was prosecuting suspects in the July 2010 terror bombings in Kampala.
Police described the murder as an assassination, but no suspect has ever been identified or arrested.
It is a year since investigations against him[ university professor] commenced. He had refused to give us the information we wanted and because we had issued several summons for him to bring us certain documents and he refused, I issued an arrest warrant to have him arrested. He ran to a ‘political friend’ who wrote a letter threatening the IGG,” Irene Mulyagonja, Inspector General of Government
