The Inspector General of Government (IGG) has said they are working on a new strategy to expose public leaders who hide their undeclared wealth behind their children’s names.

While meeting members of the new Leadership Code Tribunal on Friday, Mr George Bamugemereire, the deputy IGG, said the purpose of the Leadership Code Act is to ensure public leaders declare their income and assets, but the current law is weak on definition of breaches of the law and prescription of the punishment.

He said the IGG has submitted proposed amendments in the law to Parliament seeking to expand the breaches, offences and punishment, for example when one tells lies and under declares assets.

“Every provision of the law should be designed to achieve its purpose. Under the old law, if one did not declare in two years, it would constitute a breach but it did not prescribe the punishment and penalties to the breaches,” Mr Bamugemereire said.

He explained that the Leadership Code Tribunal is supposed to be a court to enforce the Leadership Code Act by prescribing punishments and penalties to leaders who defy it by telling lies.

“The United Kingdom has recently passed a law on the beneficial ownership of property so that even if you register it in the names of the spouse or children, the law allows you to see the people with interests behind such property and few courts around the world have gone that far,” he added.

When asked what they intend to achieve in the new law, Ms Ali Munira, the IGG spokesperson, said previously, when leaders were declaring their assets and income, they would also declare those owned by their children and spouses but in 2017 when the Leadership Code Act was amended, that provision was removed.

“We want that provision to be reinstated so that when a leader says his children and spouses own property, then it allows us to investigate whether this is hereditary property or how it was acquired given their history of work,” she said adding that discussions are already taking place between the first parliamentary council of the Ministry of Justice, the Directorate of Ethics and Integrity and the Inspectorate of Government.

Mr Bamugemereire said majority of public leaders have wealth which cannot be explained but when they are tasked to account, they claime they acquired the wealth through farming or selling some other property. He said the law does not give the IGG powers to investigate deeper beyond such claims to ascertain the facts.

The new members of the Leadership Code Tribunal also visited the IGG to familiarise themselves with the IGG operations and implementation of the Leadership Code Act.

Dr Roselyne Karugonjo, the tribunal chairperson, said many operations of the tribunal depend on cases reported to the IGG. She said they now have a backlog of 4,000 cases due to the absence of the tribunal since it was created 15 years ago.

“We want to understand how to address the cases in the next five years by developing a strategic plan. I want to appeal to politicians that we now have a tribunal that handles issues of leaders who violate the Leadership Code Act,” she said.
In 2002, Parliament passed the Leadership Code Act which mandated all leaders to declare their assets and incomes in a bid to fight corruption. Among other penalties, leaders who were found to have breached the Act, were to be barred from working in public office for a period of five years but remained silent on the fate of the concealed property which was unearthed.