SaharaReporters earlier reported how Ugandan cabinet minister Mary Goretti Kitutu Kimono was remanded in jail after being charged over a scandal involving the theft of thousands of metal roofing sheets.
Ugandan prosecutors on Wednesday criminally charged a third minister with corruption in a widening government scandal over the alleged theft of thousands of metal roofing sheets intended for a relief programme in the northeastern Karamoja region.
SaharaReporters earlier reported how Ugandan cabinet minister Mary Goretti Kitutu Kimono was remanded in jail after being charged over a scandal involving the theft of thousands of metal roofing sheets.
The minister allegedly distributed roofing materials meant for the vulnerable in the northeastern Karamoja region to her relatives and some other officials.
Many senior government officials were alleged to have received some of the stolen corrugated iron including the vice-president, prime minister, parliamentary Speaker and some ministers.
Some of them told a parliamentary committee investigating the corruption scandal, involving 14,500 missing iron sheets, that they had not asked for them.
The BBC earlier reported that the prime minister apologised and urged other officials to return the sheets.
Speaker Anita Among told the House that she had returned the ones she had received.
One minister was recently forced to remove some from the roof of his goat shed, local media reported.
However, Agnes Nandutu, the state minister for Karamoja Affairs, was on Wednesday remanded in prison by a Kampala judge after pleading not guilty to "dealing with suspect property," according to court papers seen by Reuters.
Nandutu was accused of receiving 2,000 roofing sheets from government stores "which she had reason to believe were acquired as a result of loss of public property."
Prosecutors have already charged two other lawmakers in the same case, including Uganda's junior finance minister. The relief programme is being run by the prime minister's office.
My office had opened parallel investigations into dozens of other officials, including the vice president, the country's leading prosecutor, Jane Frances Abodo, told a local radio station.
Ugandan prosecutors on Monday charged a second government minister with corruption-related offences in a scandal stemming from the diversion of roofing sheets that should have been distributed to vulnerable people.
Amos Lugoloobi, the state minister for finance in charge of planning, pleaded not guilty to the charges when he was arraigned in a courtroom in the capital, Kampala. Another minister, Mary Goretti Kitutu, was similarly charged last week.
President Yoweri Museveni, whose government is often accused of lacking the political will to stem corruption, has ordered detectives to investigate the case and indict those deemed responsible for diverting thousands of metallic roofing sheets that had been appropriated for people in the remote region of Karamoja.
The scandal came to light in February after the local New Vision newspaper reported that security officials in eastern Uganda had intercepted government-branded iron sheets being sold by relatives of Kitutu, the minister in charge of Karamoja.