Safari-Tech, a technology firm is panic after failing to unearth the supposedly rot in the telecom sector as earlier alleged.
URA hired and paid Safari-Tech Shs15 billion hoping that the technology company would help the tax body investigate the alleged tax complicity in the telecom companies.
However, it is alleged that instead of buying servers, Safari-Tech officials shared the Shs15 billion with top officials in government and in turn employed google services to do the work.
“State House is investigating a company contracted by Uganda Revenue Authority Safari-Tech after results confirmed that the Shs1.5 trillion which Safari-Tech had promised bore no fruits. A report is being compiled for head of state” said a source.
MTN was erroneously accused of manipulation of data by Safari-Tech in order to come to a tax liability of Shs1.5 trillion which was reduced to Shs260 billion but has also proved that Safari-Tech was making some triple fake entries on a monthly data which when deducted brings MTN tax liability to zero for this particular liability to Safari-Tech.
It has been proved that Safari-Tech did not collect $750 from MTN Ghana as they had claimed an even lied the president of Uganda on these facts. Exposing the technology firm as fake.
The government of Uganda was very concerned how Shs15 billion used to advance Safari-Tech to buy servers hasn’t brought any money to government.
The initial investigative team found out that Safari-Tech had no office in Kenya and their contact person Mr Andrew Chege has dodged the investigative team. The main focus of the investigation will be how money was disbursed, which servers were bought and how cash withdraws were affected. This will definitely involve the Financial Intelligence Authority and if proved correctly, they will have implications of corruption and money laundering.
They are also concerns about how data with security sensitivity could have been transferred to a third party whose dealings have been shoddy and a proper security due diligence had not been under taken.
The investigators want to carry out a security threat analysis and also wonder why URA did not use the data which government uses and which is secure but decided to put the country at risk.
Uganda has annulled a back-tax demand of Shs280 billion ($75.45 million) levied on MTN, following an assessment.
The move has ignited discontent among senior officials who had cautioned against employing the firm, citing parallels with a similar debacle in Ghana.
The back tax was dismissed after being deemed frivolous, echoing the experience in Ghana, where Safari-Tech was involved in a $773 million (GHS8.2 billion) tax dispute with MTN.
That case also ended with the tax claim being written off, raising concerns about Safari-Tech’s practices, including its registration status and the methods by which it secured contracts. The firm, established by Kenyan tax expert Andrew Gathuo Chege, came under scrutiny in Ghana for its dubious operations.
In Uganda, Brendan Adiru Wadri, Head of Revenue Intelligence at the State House, had reportedly advised President Yoweri Museveni against contracting Safari-Tech, warning of its controversial track record.
Despite protests from some of his advisers, President Museveni had sanctioned the involvement of Safari-Tech, swayed by assurances from the firm and its alleged supporters within the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) that they could recover more than Shs1.5 trillion ($404 million) in undeclared taxes.
This scenario bears a striking resemblance to the events in Ghana, where the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) proceeded with a tax claim against MTN, despite warnings from internal stakeholders and a critical reassessment by KPMG. The GRA’s decision to move forward ultimately led to the dismissal of the tax demand.
Source within MTN blame URA for listening and conspiring with former employees led by Robert Mutebi who were sacked from MTN but now are employed by the URA and Richard Mwami who was fired from MTN and now works with Safari-Tech. Both Mutebi and Mwami have an axe to grind with MTN and in normal circumstances, they should have disqualified themselves from this investigation.
