Kampala — THE Director of R4 International, a firm that has been accused of immigration service scams, has said his company was a victim of malicious propaganda.

The MD Constance Kiyega said whatever has been appearing in the newspapers is false. "There are people behind this campaign who are giving the media wrong information to spoil my business," Mr Kiyega said.

Previous media reports indicated that R4 International was issuing passports and visas illegally, an allegation Mr Kiyega denies.

"We don't issue passports or visas but only facilitate people to get them," he added. Mr Kiyega said R4 offers services to several embassies to verify people's documents and facilitates acquisition of work permits, birth, death and marriage certificates among others.

Recently, Ms Juliet Nassali accused the firm of corruption. She had instructed her father to prepare travel documents to Germany for her daughter, Maria Nabachwa. Ms Nassali said that R4 international asked her father for Shs2.5 million first, which allegations Mr Kiyega denies.

"I trust my staff and they couldn't have done that. The person who dealt with that man said he was giving inconsistent information. Our work is to verify these documents and if we find them wanting, we can't report otherwise," he says.

According to Mr Kiyega, Ms Nabachwa had a birth certificate, but on verifying the information in Mengo where she was supposedly born, there was no record of her birth.

Neither was there a file with details of her passport applications at the immigration office. The passport file was found missing from the strong room," Kiyega said.

He said this was the reason Nabacwa was denied the family re-union visa. Ms Nassali who came to Uganda to solve this problem accused R4 of sabotage. But Mr Kiyega revealed that Ms Nassali later discovered that her father never followed the right procedure but probably wanted to extort money from her.

"After realising that we were not at fault, she apologised to us and paid us Shs 700,000 for the extra expenses she had put us through,"Mr Kiyega said.