The Anti-corruption court under Justice Margret Tibulya, last week, convicted former junior minister for Labour, Herbert Kabafunzaki on corruption charges and asked him to pay a fine of Shs10 Million, failure of which he has to serve three years in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kabafunzaki, a former MP for Rukiga County [2016-2021], now Rukiga District, is also barred from holding public office for a period of 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
THE CASE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kabafunzaki and his two aides were arrested on April 8 2017 at Serena hotel in Kampala for soliciting a bribe from Aya Group Chairman Mohammed Hamid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was nabbed by security operatives from police and Special Forces Command (SFC) at Serena\u2019s Explorer bar after Hamid handed him Shs 5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The arrest followed a tip off from the tycoon whose passion for business in Uganda is well known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Yoweri Museveni has always asked investors in the country to report to him officials who solicit bribes from them, something that played out during the arrest of Kabafunzaki. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was charged with two counts of corruption contrary to section 2 (a) and 26 of the Anti-Corruption Act 2009 and one count of conspiracy contrary to section 390 of the penal code Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At some point during the trial, the former minister went missing, mysteriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The presiding judge pushed his wife, Ms Doreen Kabafunzaki, to produce him in court, saying she did not believe that she did not know the whereabouts of her husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Justice Tibulya reasoned that Ms Kabafunzaki did not report a matter of a missing person at the nearest police station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the count of corruption, prosecution says on April 8, 2017, while performing his duties as minister at Kampala Serena Hotel, Kabafunzaki directly solicited Shs15m from Mr Hamid as a gratification for clearing his name from allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In court count two of corruption, the state alleges that on the same day, the minister directly accepted Shs5m as a gratification from Hamid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the third count of conspiracy to commit a felony, the State said between April 6 and 8, 2017, Mr Kabafunzaki conspired with Mr Lubowa to solicit a gratification of Shs15m from Hamid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Mugabo separately, faces a single charge of being an accessory after fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Anti-corruption court under Justice Margret Tibulya, last week, convicted former junior minister for Labour, Herbert Kabafunzaki on corruption charges and asked him to pay a fine of Shs10 Million, failure of which he has to serve three years in prison. Kabafunzaki, a former MP for Rukiga County [2016-2021], now Rukiga District, is also barred from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27983,"featured_media":26959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26961,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26958\/revisions\/26961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}