Lominda Afedraru
19 February 2005
Court — The Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court on Thursday heard that Ms Aslund Annebritt (R), the former Commissioner General Uganda Revenue Authority, was involved in a Sh12 billion tax loss case.
Aslund was being cross-examined before Magistrate Olive Kazairwe by lawyer Fred Muwema.
The prosecution has accused 12 former URA staff of aiding an an importer, Genesis (U) Ltd, to avoid about Sh800 million in taxes.
Aslund admitted before the court the loss of Sh800 million was part of the undervaluing of a Shs12 billion worth of goods.
She said Genesis sued her and Mr Gaittare Kaihura, an investigator linked to State House over the matter. "We were sued by Genesis (U) ltd in a civil suit filed at the High Court but we entered a consent judgement on October 29, 2003 where it was agreed that goods imported by Genesis were undervalued by Shs7 billion and they also accepted to pay a penalty of Sh5.4 billion," she told court.
She said by the time she left the tax body, the company had started paying the money to URA. "Yes it is true that URA is recovering the money from Genesis.
This case is part of a wider case out of which Sh800 million case arose. The loss of this money is connected to our case," she said.
"I do not know as to who caused the loss, could be those who facilitated the under-valuation," she said.
Aslund admitted that before the accused were charged, no one had listened to their side of their story as provided for in the URA Act.
"Usually as a policy of URA, when there is a case about an employee, the matter is forwarded to the disciplinary committee. But as concerns this case, it was not done," she said.
She said investigations were done with the help of Kaihura who was introduced to her by somebody from State House.
To her, it was not necessary to involve the URA investigations team because they could easily leak the information to the public.
" I strongly didn't want the public to know because it could compromise the investigations and some evidence would be plucked out as it was a rampant case that documents used to disappear," she said.
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