Ugandans write to IMF seeking cancellation of $1b loan to Museveni Government

Ugandans write to IMF seeking cancellation of $1b loan to Museveni dictatorship
By Bobi Wine:

Our Diaspora Leadership Team has written this letter to the Managing Director of IMF over plans to yet again extend over 1 billion dollars to the regime. There will be a global online protest this Friday to further this demand.

Ms. Kristalina Georgieva,

Managing Director

International Monetary Fund

1900 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20431

June 07, 2021

Dear Ms. Kristalina Georgieva,



Ugandans and friends of Uganda beseech you and the entire management of the International Monetary Fund to decline approving the proposed $1 billion ECF to Uganda due to its long-standing failure to account for public funds. In addition, the Ugandan regime is now considered illegitimate by most Ugandans.

On January 14, 2021, dictator Museveni lost a Presidential election — 54.19% to 34.83% per independent tallies — to principal challenger, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (aka Bobi Wine), though Museveni’s handpicked electoral commission declared him winner. The fraudulent declaration is currently being challenged in the East African Court of Justice with supporting evidence that was declined by a partisan Uganda Supreme Court.



It would be unconscionable for the IMF to allocate more funds to a regime so riddled with endemic corruption that the almost $1 billion that IMF, World Bank & other international donors allocated to Uganda in 2020 for Covid relief was either embezzled or misdirected towards military suppression of opposition political party supporters.

Some covid funds were channeled to Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa’s two daughters’ company which was awarded a contract to deliver Oxygen to Uganda’s hospitals, but failed to do so.
Meanwhile, Ugandans died (in 2020) and continue to die (June 2021) of Covid-19 due to lack of oxygen in hospitals.

https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/investigation-how-lack-of-oxygen-poor-health-sector-is-killing-covid-19-patients-in-uganda-3213300



Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa has himself been implicated in various corruption scandals in Uganda. And, in 2018, he was indicted in New York for accepting a bribe from a Chinese businessman in exchange for facilitating Chinese investment interests in Uganda.

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/68019-us-court-upholds-minister-sam-kutesa-briber-conviction

As this letter to Senator Coons from the New York Bar Association indicates, World Bank Covid relief money to Uganda was also misappropriated:

2020812-UgandaWorldBank.pdf

New York Review of Books article on how Covid relief funds were likely redirected towards military suppression, including during the November 18, 2020, protests:

In Uganda, Another Museveni Crackdown | by Helen Epstein | The New York Review of Books (nybooks.com)



More Press stories on Covid-19 related Corruption in Uganda



https://medium.com/u4-anti-corruption-resource-centre/ugandas-covid-19-supplementary-budget-pandemic-response-or-cash-bonanza-3296d8f338b6
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/prosecute-thieves-of-covid-19-cash-report-3231244

According to the June 1, 2021, IMF press release 21/152’s FAQ section on the Staff Level Agreement on a three-year $1 billion Financing Package to Uganda:

“The Program’s transparency and governance reforms will build upon the improvements launched by the government’s new leadership code – which requires government officials to disclose their assets, incomes and liabilities, and clarifies sanctions in case of false reporting.”



The “new leadership code’ is a smokescreen. Runaway corruption in Uganda is not due to a lack of a leadership code. Uganda has had a leadership code act since 2002,

https://www.ugandalaws.com/principal-legislation/leadership-code-act

but it has had no effect on corruption because corrupt officials are intricately linked to Museveni and his kin. Museveni also fuels corruption by openly bribing members of parliament whenever he wants to pass controversial legislation such as the removal of the age limit clause from the constitution in 2017.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uganda-politics/ugandan-mps-get-8000-each-for-work-on-extending-presidents-rule-spokesman-idUSKBN1CT1J6

There is no new substantive leadership code. Museveni simply just announced a “leadership-code tribunal.” Experience shows that such announcements are merely stratagems that Museveni uses to appear to be addressing international and domestic calls for action.



https://www.mediacentre.go.ug/media/president-museveni-swears-new-leadership-code-tribunal

According to the press release’s FAQ section:

“The [Uganda] Government has already completed the audit of COVID-19 spending for FY 19/20, which is expected to be published in the coming days. Some aggregate procurement reports have already been published and individual procurement contracts will also be published in the next few days.”

https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/UGA/uganda-qandas