By Melanie Aanyu,

The Inspector General of Government, Beti Kamya has announced that she will press ahead with conducting a lifestyle audit on government officials whose wealth does not match their known income.

Kamya’s declaration comes four months after President Yoweri Museveni cautioned her on the strategy, saying she should go slow as it could scare the corrupt officials from investing the stolen funds in the country and instead take the money abroad.

But Beti Kamya now says that it is very hard to catch the corrupt top government officials and so she has to pursue the life style audit approach.

Kamya says it’s hard to find evidence to pin top government officials for corruption because they operate through lower staff, they don’t sign on documents, sometimes discuss corruption deals from abroad and keep ‘their’ stolen money in offshore accounts.

She says without any footprints left nor tangible evidence, they are not able to prosecute top government officials engaged in corruption.

According to a recent survey by the Inspectorate, the cost of corruption in Uganda has risen from 9.1 trillion Shillings in 2019 to 20 trillion Shillings annually.

Half of this money is lost during procurement processes, under declaration of tax and utility costs among others. The other 10 trillion Shillings is lost due to absenteeism of civil servants especially health workers and teachers.

Kamya says that because it is hard to catch the big fish who engage in big corruption deals, the inspectorate has focused its efforts on the lifestyle audit to nab corrupt officials.

Under the lifestyle audit, the inspectorate shall, based on officer’s declarations, compare earnings of an official and their investment to see if they are in tandem.

Kamya says that for an official who earns 2 million shillings to have a huge investment, they should be able to explain the source of the money. Failure to do so, Kamya says the property of such officials shall be confiscated and sold to recover government funds.