Government attacked for not taking action against senior officials, despite repeated promises to stamp out the practice
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Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and his government have vowed to tackle corruption. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
The Ugandan government has been criticised for failing to take action against senior officials implicated in corruption scandals, according to a new report.
The report, Letting the big fish swim: failure to prosecute high-level corruption in Uganda, published on Monday, said no high-ranking official, minister or political appointee had served a prison sentence despite investigations into numerous corruption scandals.
"The only conviction of a minister was overturned on appeal in 2013, after president [Museveni] himself offered to pay his legal costs," said the report, published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Yale Law School's Allard K Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic.
The report describes corruption in Uganda as "severe, well-known" and something that "cuts across many sectors".
The report analysed 114 judgments issued by the anti-corruption court since its creation in 2009, and included interviews with current and former officials from the inspectorate of the government auditor general and the directorate of public prosecutions, MPs, legal attorneys, journalists and NGOs, conducted between May and August this year.
The report said there was limited information available to the public about some of these cases – only information for 34 judgments was publicly available from the Uganda Legal Information institute.
President Museveni and his government have repeatedly promised to stamp out corruption, but major corruption scandals resurface in government departments and ministries, said the report.
"This report is essential because this is the time when many donors are in a state of reflection to see how they can keep on assisting on development," said Maria Burnett, a senior Africa researcher at HRW. "Donors need to know that there is an element of impunity and lack of political will when it comes to [corruption] cases that are politically sensitive."
Pertinent to Uganda's case, the report said, is that those who testify against the powerful government officials are often intimidated and threatened.
Anti-corruption activists have been arrested, while NGOs that speak out arethreatened with de-registration or closure. Political interference, patronage, lack of appointed personnel in anti-corruption institutions have also hampered efforts to fight graft.
The report cites major corruption scandals that have hit the country recently, in which high-level government officials were accused, but none were prosecuted.
In 2012, Britain was among the donors that suspended all direct aid to the Ugandan prime minister's office over allegations of fraud.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars were diverted from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation in 2006, and from the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2010. "Despite investigations, none of the high-ranking government officials who managed the implicated offices have faced criminal sanction. Most often they have remained in office, untouched, while individuals working at the technical level have faced prosecution and, in some cases, jail time," said the report.
It added: "Mid-level managers faced prosecutions but the implicated ministers resigned only to return recently to key posts in government."
The prime minister Amama Mbabazi has also been accused of having been involved in corruption cases, including allegations related to the sale of land to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), only to receive protection from the President Museveni, said the report.
The Ugandan government is relying more on China for development assistance, especially for infrastructure projects, because Beijing does not impose the same conditions of democracy and human rights on its aid as traditional donors.
According to Transparency International's recent Global Corruption BarometerUganda was ranked the second most corrupt country in east Africa, after Kenya, and the 17th most corrupt in the world.
The HRW report said corruption in the country had mainly impacted ordinary people, as money intended for public services including life-saving treatment or infrastructure projects have all but been misappropriated.
Many rural schools in Uganda remain in a poor state and there are regularteachers' strikes over low pay. The health system is ailing, with more doctors preferring to work in foreign countries where they can receive better salaries.
Yet the country loses up to $258.6m (£160.3m) a year due to corruption, according to 2007 the African Peer Review Mechanism report.
Cissy Kagaba, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda told Kampala's Observer newspaper that "even when there have been steps to fight corruption through the creation of institutions like IGG, DPP and the public accounts committee, all these have been made inefficient due to lack of political will".
The report says if the Ugandan government is committed to fighting corruption, it must stop arrests and intimidation of anti-corruption activists and strengthen the protections afforded to investigators, prosecutors and witnesses.
