UGANDA'S TOP GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL GETS 28 YEARS FOR STEALING PUBLIC FUNDS!

THE NEW VISION
KAMPALA, UGANDA
8th April, 2009

By Anne Mugisa, Hillary
Nsambu, Brian Mayanja
and Edward Anyoli

TEDDY Seezi Cheeye, the director of economic monitoring in the Internal Security Organisation, has been convicted and sentenced to 28 years imprisonment for embezzling Global Fund money. He will also pay back sh110m to the Global Fund.

“The accused set up a company, which to his knowledge was a mere sham or simulacrum, only intended to feather his own nest with ill-gotten money. He used a method not quite different from mere expedients by which rogues of his ilk seem to think they can get away from the real substance of the transaction,” the judge, Justice J.B. Katutsi, said.

“In siphoning funds meant to alleviate and ease the suffering of the wretched of the earth, the victims of the scourge of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria into his own stomach he is no better than a mass murderer, which in truth he is! Think of hundreds of thousands of the victims of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria who include innocent children from whom he robbed the little opportunity to receive a bit of comfort, nay a new lease to life and you will know what beast he is. The time for reckoning is now.
Impunity must be looked in the face and told ‘no more of this’,” Katutsi responded to pleas for leniency from Cheeye’s lawyer, Peter Kabatsi.

Cheeye rose to prominence in the early 1990s as editor of the defunct Uganda Confidential, a newsletter that specialised in exposing financial scandals in government. The catchword for his newsletter was “the paper that splits the atom.”

The judge said Cheeye will serve 10 years imprisonment for embezzlement and three years for each of the eight counts of forgery.
However, the 51-year-old anti-corruption crusader of the 1990s will be in prison for only 10 of the 28 years because he will serve the sentences concurrently.

As soon as the judge moved out of the courtroom, Cheeye’s dejected relatives and friends hugged him and cried. He held his wife, Annet Kairaba, tightly and kissed her on the cheeks as she wept.

Immediately Cheeye moved out of the courtroom, Police and Prisons officers closed in on him and whisked him to the cells from where he would be transported to prison.
Cheeye, who becomes the second person to be convicted over the Global Fund monies, was charged with 26 counts. The first count was for embezzlement where he was accused of stealing sh120m through his NGO the “Centre for Accountability”. He was also charged with six counts of forgery.

Cheeye was also charged with nine counts of making false entries in accounts and eight counts of uttering false documents to the Commission of Inquiry which probed the mismanagement of the Global Fund.

He was, however, acquitted of making false entries in accounts and uttering false documents to the probe, which was headed by Principal Judge, James Ogoola.
On embezzlement, the judge said the State had proved that Cheeye was the sole director and signatory of his NGO and his wife was his secretary. He was the sole operator of the company’s bank account, where sh120m was wired by telegraphic transfer from the Global Fund. He withdrew sh96,694,000 of it on March 15, 2005 using three cheques, two of sh20m each and one of sh56.6m.

The judge said witnesses testified that Cheeye’s company never carried out any of the activities it was selected to do in the districts of Kabale, Rakai, Mbarara and Ntungamo. The company was supposed to carry out community-based interventions and strengthening capacity to fight HIV/AIDS.

The judge scoffed at Cheeye’s accountability for fuel which the convict said consumed sh5m. The judge said one of the vehicles, UAA 688T, was a tractor wheel loader belonging to a construction company, which uses diesel, not petrol as Cheeye had claimed.

The other vehicle, UAE 684T that Cheeye said he used and fuelled with petrol actually belonged to Mengo Hospital, is run on diesel and had never been hired out, according to the medical director, Dr. George Bukenya.

“I find the accused guilty on each and every count of forgery,” the judge stated.

The judge said Cheeye exhibited a lot of impunity. “How do we explain the mentality of a man who in order to account for the money received states that he transported people on a Caterpillar wheel loader! That a Caterpillar wheel loader that uses diesel this time was using petrol. Is this stupidity or impunity?” wondered Katutsi.

“Again how do we explain the mentality of a man against whom there is evidence that he received money, and that in a bid to account for the money received, used forged documents and who beats his chest and says: “There is no case against me. Do what you can. I will say nothing!’ If that is not impunity, then what else can it be?” he asked.

Cheeye’s lawyer, Kabatsi, told journalists that Cheeye had instructed him to appeal against the conviction and sentence.

Fred Kavuma, a former programme producer of the defunct UTV, was the first person to be convicted over the Global Fund monies. He was sentenced to five years in prison and told to refund sh41m to the fund.