Public officers should be required to register their transactions to deter and remedy corruption in Uganda

by Administrator · February 23, 2022

Information is indispensable in the fight against corruption and money laundering. Furthermore, information is vital to the collection and enforcement of taxes and recovering of illicitly acquired wealth. The state cannot tax incomes or recovery illicitly acquired wealth whose ownership it can not prove. For example, Uganda has failed to carry out meaningful asset recovery because it can prove that public officers have accumulated illicitly acquired. In the circumstances, public officers fearlessly embezzle public funds and solicit bribes without fear that they will be convicted and their illicitly acquired wealth confiscated. Money laundering is the process by which public officers clean the proceeds of their corruption, legitimise it and integrate it into the financial system. Therefore, when a state successfully combats money laundering, it deters organized crimes such as corruption because the biggest drivers of such offenses is illicit enrichment. When it becomes harder to profit from corruption and to hide the proceeds, the more unattractive corruption becomes to that would otherwise join engage in them.

In Uganda, corruption is very attractive because it is very lucrative, profitable and relatively risk free. In our banana republic, public officers plunder and rob public resources with ease, integrate the illicitly acquired funds into the financial system, acquire high end real estate and build farms, skyscrapers and expensive automobiles. Corrupt public officers in Uganda shops in Paris, have diner in Milan and sleep in London. Their kids attend the best schools, their concubines and girlfriends shop in Dubai and live in apartments in Kololo and the public praises their good fortune, cunnings and hard work.

Money laundering in Uganda is easy because of the cash economy and the high prevalence of unregistered interests. However, if Uganda, Uganda put in place a legal requirement to register transactions between a public officer and another person, it would eliminate some difficulties created by unregistered assets and the cash economy. By requiring all public officers/servants in Uganda to register their transactions, Uganda will be able to create a database of transactions undertaken by those who are most likely to plunder and rob public services. A law that invalidates any transaction involving a public servant beyond a certain value that is not preregistered with the state would compel public servants to register all their transactions. To incentivize registration, a party to a transaction with a public officer can be allowed to keep a percentage of the fee paid by the public officer and the property or goods in case the public officer fails to register the transaction. For example , if a public officer (P) wants to purchase a motor vehicle from a vendor (V) at UGX 10M, the public officer should be required to preregister the transaction (T). Should the public officer fail to preregister the transaction, if the vendor is a business, the vendor should be fined double their fee of UGX 10M. If the vendor is an individual, the individual should be allowed to retain thirty percent of the fee in issue and the goods or property being sold. Any person should be allowed to receive thirty percent of the value of any unregistered transaction that they report. Furthermore, in case both the vendor and the public officer fail to report or register the transaction, each of them should be fined double the value of the transaction.

In such circumstances, there law provides an incentive to register the transactions to both the public officers and the vendors. Even where the public officer and the vendor collude, third parties are incentivized to report unregistered transactions. For example, the law could allow any member of the public to search a specific transaction and find out if the transaction in issue was registered by the public officer party to it. If the transaction is unregistered, a member of the public is incentivized to report it and get thirty percent of its value.