CID should probe Kutesa - Besigye

Kabale: Former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party president and four-time presidential candidate, Dr Kizza Besigye, has said the Foreign Affairs minister, Mr Sam Kutesa, should be handed over to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the police for thorough investigations.
Court in the United States on December 5 convicted Patrick Chi-Ping Ho, the former Hong Kong Home Affairs Secretary, for allegedly giving a Shs1.9 billion to Mr Kutesa in 2016.
President Museveni on Monday said the Attorney General will investigate the matter.
But Dr Besigye insists Mr Museveni should have directed the CID to handle the matter.
“The problem we have in Uganda is poor leadership; imagine Mr Museveni asking a minister to investigate a colleague over bribery instead of directing the criminal investigations department of the police to investigate him. There will be no fairness in the investigations,” Dr Besigye said.
He was speaking at the burial of Cellinah Bamusiime Murumba in Bwegyerere village Rubanda Town Council on Wednesday. Murumba, 50, was wife of the former FDC party lawyer Wilfred Murumba who died in April 2015 due to liver complications. The deceased was a teacher at St Mary’s College Rushoroza in Kabale Town. She succumbed to diabetes on Sunday in Kampala.
Dr Besigye said she passed on after the family members failed to raise Shs2.5 million to buy the required drugs.
“Our country is not poor but poor leadership is a big problem.
During a press conference in Kampala recently a journalist asked Mr Museveni about Mr Kutesa being implicated in a bribery case but did not him that his portrait was also paraded in the same court marked as an exhibit of the person that also received the money. Everybody in government was keeping quiet about the USA court ruling that implicated Mr Kutesa in the bribery case until a journalist raised it,” Dr Besigye.

Background

A United States court last week convicted Hong Kong’s former Home Affairs Secretary, Patrick Chi-Ping Ho, for offering $500,000 (about Shs1.9b) bribe to Uganda’s Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa.
Mr Kutesa previously dismissed the allegation as false when US federal investigators first arrested Mr Ho in November last year.