Reported by Kerry Howard Mwesigwa
Ruth Achimo Etibot, the former Secretary of Soroti University, has been convicted of several charges, including fraudulent false accounting, abuse of office, and diversion of public resources. She was accused of leveraging her position as an accounting officer to redirect more than 1 billion shillings intended for capital development projects towards legal fees, employee, and travel allowances without following due process. This diversion severely impacted critical initiatives such as the procurement of ICT equipment and resulted in significant fines for the university for non-payment.
Achimo Etibot has been sentenced to five years in prison, and a public office ban of at least 10 years. Honourable Lady Justice Margaret Tibulya of the Anti-Corruption Court delivered the verdict following investigations by State House Anti-Corruption Unit and Uganda Police, which led to the successful prosecution of the 13th accounting officer for corruption.
The case involved the signing of a legal services agreement by Achimo Etibot without following formal procurement procedures. The evidence presented showed that the law firm in question was among three pre-qualified for legal services, and Achimo Etibot used her position to pay them 1,025,265,000 shillings in legal fees within three months. These monies were diverted from capital development, even though they were not budgeted for under the financial year 2017/2018. Further investigation showed that Achimo Etibot redirected more capital development funds towards non-current expenditures such as staff allowances, leading to delayed payments for essential projects and resulting in penalties for non-payment.
Despite utilizing the capital development funds for non-recurrent activities, Achimo Etibot falsely reported in progress reports that all the funds had been spent on capital development projects, thereby concealing the actual activities on which the money was spent. She knowingly furnished a false statement of the money received by her or entrusted to her care, and her actions were found to be irregular with blatant impunity that no amount of explanation could sanitize. Consequently, only a term of imprisonment was deemed suitable by the trial judge.
