Officials and staff working at the office of the Commissioner Land Registration last Thursday evening were shocked when detectives from different security agencies raided their offices and placed them on strict emergency orders.
Highly placed sources in the Ministry of Lands revealed to this investigative website that the detectives who raided their offices were from the police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), State House Anti Corruption Unit and from the army and they suspect that they were working on the orders of the President.
“Security at our offices was the first to be placed under strict orders not to disrupt their operation, immediately after, they forced their way into our offices and we were told to remain where we were. All unnecessary movements were halted. The situation was tense and two of our staff went through their clothes,” a source said.
He said that detectives started searching from one office to another, opening desk safes, turning tables upside down and at the end of the operation a number of documents were taken including sums of money.
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“I was also shocked to see sums of money being removed from our bosses’ offices. I did not expect a person to keep a sack of money in a public office,” a Ministry of Lands insider who was present during the raid told this website.
He added that there were arrests made but by the end of Monday this week, a number of them had been released on a police bond.
Highly placed sources at State House told this website that the raid was sanctioned by the President after he received a complaint from an old women, a resident of Entebbe Municipality who accused officers in the offices of the commissioner land registration of fraudulently placing a fake land title on hers and threatening to cancel her land title.
Recently, lands junior minister Dr Sam Mayanja revealed to this website that the president was bitter with officials in the office of the commissioner land registration who are trying to frustrate his idea of developing Ggunda land claiming that it is a forest reserve.
Mayanja explained that he wrote to Baker Mugaino the Commissioner Land registration to cancel all land titles made on Gunda land and issue a fresh land title registered in the names of State House to help the office of the president to secure billions of money from the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development to start developing the said land.
He said that what Mugaino did was to petition the Solicitor General for legal guidance claiming that Mayanja was forcing him to cancel forest land a gesture Mayanja interpreted as a trick to frustrate the execution of the presidential directive.
Dr. Hillary Musoke the Senior presidential advisor for youths, agriculture and value addition said that the President directed him together with minister Mayanja and Phiona Birungi the senior presidential advisor on special duties to follow up the issue of Gunda land claiming that they have been frustrated by officers in the office of the commissioner land registration.
Panic is still high in the office of the commissioner land registration after the Inspector General of Government (IGG) Beti Namisango Kamya last week ordered the interdiction of Mugaino who was placed under investigation together with other officers.
Kamya explained that Mugaino’s interdiction resulted from several complaints her office has been receiving against him and other officials connecting them to fraud.
Jasper Kakooza the acting commissioner in charge of mapping and survey in the Ministry of Lands together with others were last week charged before the Anti Corruption court with the offences related to abuse of officeand fraud. They were remanded to prison.
Kakooza is not new in land fraud scandals. He was among the Ministry of Lands officials who Justice Catherine Bamugemereire’s land probe reportly recommended that he should be prosecuted over multiple fraud practices made in their respective offices.
During the swearing in of the new deputy chief justice Dr Flavian Zeija, President Museveni pleaded with the judiciary to save the public from land grabbers who are playing with the government systems and are illegally evicting people from their land.
He cited a situation in Kiboga district where a young man, a one Patrick Ainabyona evicted an old man Badru Mwanje.
The President said that he was the one who personally intervened and saved Mwanje after watching the news on TV seeing a young Ainabyona using the army and police to evict Mwanje.
