By Our Reporter
Kampala: The head of records at the Departed Asians Properties Custodian Board (DAPCB) Irine Apiyo was Tuesday handed over to police for interrogation after Members of Parliament sitting on the select committee investigating the mess in her office were shocked to catch her red-handed allegdly destroying crucial documents concerning the repossession, sale and transfer of the same.
The other being investigated is the board’s executive director Mr. George William Bizibu to ascertain whether there was any connivance with the records head Apiyo on the same alleged criminal act.
The un-announced visit to the office of the secretary to the board, Mr George William Bizibu by the section of MPs sitting on parliamentary Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) landed on piles of documents including correspondences and land titles being destroyed in his office, which raised more suspicions in the minds of the MPs, citing possible fraud at the custodian board.
The committee investigating how Asians who lost their properties after President Idi Amin expelled them from the country in the early 1970s reclaimed their properties has so far found out a lot of mess in the handling of the process.
Many of these Asians were compensated but still, hundreds have since reportedly been blocked from accessing their properties by powerful people in government.
The selected committee headed by Makindye east MP Ibrahim Kasozi, have met some of the claimants to the properties who have told the committee untold stories of being cheated by people they offered powers of attorney while many properties were also grabbed or allocated to powerful government officials.
Among the management lapses in the DAPCB is the failure of the board to do their part in ascertaining the ownership of properties.
The board headed by Finance Minister Matia Kasaija which is supposed to meet monthly, rarely meets to deliberate on the matters at hand. COSASE seek to rectify what has gone wrong in a bid to recover government money paid to wrong people as well as hand over the unclaimed or wrongly awarded properties to the right owners.
Over Sh1.7 billion has so far been lost in illegalities including fictitious compensations, double allocation of properties, forged land titles, sale of assets without proper valuation, missing documents among other.
