President Yoweri Museveni has created a State House Revenue Intelligence and Strategic Operations Unit to oversee Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) operations and fight corruption within the tax administration system.
“His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has created the State House Revenue Intelligence and Strategic Operations Unit to do an oversight on Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) operations and fight corruption within the tax administration system,” read the letter from the Presidential Press Unit.
The President also appointed Mr. David Kalemera as a Senior Presidential Advisor and Head of the Unit.
“The creation of this Unit will help the government to close revenue leakages and boost tax collection,” the letter confirmed.
On June 28, Eagle Online revealed through a story on how conmen, ex-high profiled convicts are running URA whistleblower’s rackets to make a kill.
Uganda Revenue Authority is a subject of discussion as details emerge that its Whistleblower’s portal is being abused by its staff and top city tricksters to lure top companies in unsuspecting tax rackets.
Information available indicate several companies have fallen victim to this racket and are seeking the country’s investigative agencies to come to their rescue
“Agencies like the Anti-Corruption Unit should look into URA rackets and act harshly the same way they have worked on Parliament”.
According to one of such companies, this involves rackets in URA which aids damping goods in the country that include fuel that creates losses to the Republic of Uganda.
One of the rackets that Crime Intelligence should investigate is the whistleblower racket which they say works in connivance with some people to lure some companies that they owe URA money and therefore, moves ahead to demand for 30%. Sources told this website that a top multinational company that has been a victim of this racket recently obtained recordings, legal documents on how the commission on the 30 % is shared allegedly amongst these rackets and URA staff.
Part of this racket is to force estimates on companies and upon rejection, they are forced to pay 30% deposit and of this 30% deposit, the whistleblower claims 10% straightaway which is paid to a group in URA since it is an internal racket.
However, as this goes on, the affected companies move to seek legal redress and once the said company wins the case against URA, the whistleblower commission is kept on the books of account and is never refunded. According to sources, this has amounted to billions of shillings for the last few years and there is a hashtag code named internal connivance. The affected companies claim this is direct theft from the treasury because the companies are never refunded by the whistleblower.
The second racket is the VAT racket and as we speak, there is a case in court as an employee of the taxman was dragged to court as evidently accepted by URA with admission. The pleas are that there should be an audit as to how much has been lost through this scheme and money refunded and culprits dealt with the same way Members of Parliament are handled.
The concerned companies say a similar occurrence took place when the same group tried billions of shillings from Bujagali power.
“This racket has reduced investor confidence in Uganda and one wonder why entities like Game and among others are leaving the country.
This racket involves people from the taxman, some conmen in town and ex-high profiled convicts.
