Adjumani, (UG):- The former Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for Adjumani District, Mr Oryono Grandfield Omonda is yet again embroiled in a fresh twist of charges, this time related to forgery of documents and causing government loss of over Shs550 million.
Oryono reigned in the CAO’s office in Adjumani after ravaging Moyo district local government with instinctual and visceral master art of graft where he landed several high-profile civil servants before the mighty anti-corruption court and others have since then despairingly lost their jobs.
The alert cautionary bells were signalled to the rulers of Adjumani immediately Mr Oryono assumed office in the annals of Aulogo II on February 22, 2022, but he adroitly and promptly moved to build and secure a marriage of convenience with persons in echelons of power anchoring on patronage, then maleficently imposed himself as the indubitable superior.
The enormities are at this instant dire as the cronies of Mr Oryono are tending towards the mighty walls of Luzira prisons following the detection of overwhelming smithereens of evidence in the shs 1.1bn World Bank Funded Development Response to Displacement Impact Project, (DRDIP)tax fraud.
Oryono who gleefully brags of possessing the anti-virus of IGG and State House Anti Corruption Unit (SHACU) exploratory mechanisms has a magical, superb and dyed-in-the-wool eye for money, he engages vote controllers (department heads) in a “deal of signature for cash” in any transaction that is statutory according to a senior government official in Adjumani.
His blue-eyed super civil servants, maintain that on the routine office menu, Oryono is scanning through departmental budget lines, highlighting areas of indistinctness where he would lay the traps for surgically clutching funds predestined for service delivery, which according to the ill-fated technical officers point to a conspiracy against the poor people.
“His stomach is like the earth, it cannot get full but in Adjumani he has eaten too much for the owner or the everyday person to remain silent, DRDIP beneficiaries want to face him in court to question why he has taken away their funds,” A CPMC official observed.
Oryono ‘cries foul’
In his trash, desperate and frantic press release dated September 28, 2024, Mr Oryono affirmed that Adjumani District and all the community development groups under (DRDIP) are registered with Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and have respective Tax Identification Numbers (TINs). This very misleading statement, is a malicious public relations gimmick and a foul orchestration that meanders through a lot of fissures or deep holes.
It is not true that the community sub-projects organized under Community Project Management Committees(CPMC) have TINs and if indeed it’s true why didn’t the CAO’s office allow them(CPMCs) to withhold taxes and where is the record that they actually withheld taxes?. The government is aware that there is no way contractors can evade withholding taxes because the key requirement for a contract award is a valid Tax Clarence certificate (TCC) therefore all contractors’ pay tax upfront.
“There is no DRDIP guideline from the Office of Prime Minister(OPM) that permits the district to withhold taxes and there is no contract between community sub-project leaders(CPMCs)and the tax body (URA) to withhold taxes this is why in the 13 DRDIP districts in Uganda it is only Adjumani that fraudulently but also illegally withheld taxes”.
“It is on record that Adjumani district local government did not sign a contract with the contractors and in the contract between the CPMCs and the contractors CAO’s office is humbly a witness, so Mr.Oryono illegally imposed himself in withholding taxes when his office did not have the mandate that’s why he ended up in the shs 1.1bn tax scam”. A well-placed senior officer divulged.
“His argument that upon disbursements of funds to the community accounts by the district, communities are supposed to withhold the WHT is fallacious because it is nowhere in the guideline and there is no contract between URA and PMCs for the withholding of taxes under DRDIP besides out of the 26 projects that were executed by Adjumani District Contractors Association only 6 of them have TINs”.
In his vain and wasted struggle to clear his name in the shs 1.1 bn DRDIP with Holding Tax (WHT) Scandal, fresh pieces of confirmation of forgery and authoring false documents have been uncovered. Super subterranean furtive investigations now pin Mr Oryono to dispensing and supplying several hoax accountability documents to the office of Permanent Secretary Ministry of Local Government, Mr Ben Kumumanya and other line ministries.
Scandals escalate
Deliberate, dubious and carefully coordinated financial irregularities in remittances of withholding taxes that were variously superintended by Mr Oryono were uncovered in the tax transactions of Agweru General Merchandise, a business owned by Adjumani business mogul and chairman ACDA Mr Fadul Yusuf Abdul.
Agweru Merchandise executed five contracts under DRDIP with a cumulative contract value of shs 2.5bn and the 6% WHT that was allegedly filed to URA is shs 150m but investigations disclosed that DRDIP officials connived with some officials in Stanbic bank to issue phoney or forged payments slips and the actual total amount of cash that was filed to URA through Stanbic bank is shs 52m leaving a deficit of shs 97m.
Cases of rudimentary forgeries of numerous payment registration slips were also established as the accounts assistant attached to the DRDIP, MS Acen Lily Rose generated payment registration slips which were dully stamped in Stanbic Bank Adjumani branch, but with no evidence of cash deposited in the URA accounts and of course cash not reflected in the respective ledger accounts of the contractors.
The Managing Director, of Kate Contractors Construction Company Limited Mr. Tiondi Godfrey who has been awarded three contracts with a total contract value of shs 1.616.610.673 was equally nervous when he gathered that shs 77.374.897, which was purportedly filed to his URA tax account by Adjumani district local government was a decoy no cash was dispatched to his account, the registration payment slips were all forged..
Another contractor Silver Court Lounge has raised a similar complaint, his cumulative contract value for three projects is worth shs 1.067.293.665, which attracts 6%wht of shs 64,037.619, but despite the rubicund accountability report issued by Mr.Oryono only shs 51.836,1261m was reflected on ledger in URA, this leaves unpaid balance of shs 12.059.06119.
Contractors speak
The Adjumani business tycoons under their umbrella Adjumani District Contractors Association (ADCA) have recognized most of the registration payment slips issued to them by the Adjumani district local government in tax transactions cumulatively amounting to shs 550, 540, 566, are forged and out of the shs 1.1bn they are demanding from the district in withholding taxes only shs 233.666.440 has been filed to URA and the contractors have proved that the cash have reached their ledger accounts.
The chairman of ADCA Mr Fadul has declared they will institute both criminal and civil proceedings against the embattled CAO Oryno at the time and convenience of their own choosing as they remain pursuing administrative remedy ministry of local government Permanent Secretary Mr.Ben Kumumanya to ensure they recover their cash.
Under the tutelage of an absolute hard-core corruption squad built by CAO Oryono, all avenues and gaps for taking away cash from the owner were surgically explored by the graft squad who computed the 6% WHT less in most of their payments and insisted on their own art of accuracy in mathematical computations and resisted all electronic gadgets that have made calculations’ easier.
Several contractors are sadly ruing from the millions of financial damages incurred upon them by corruption master in a one-dimensional but byzantine to-punch loophole that has been employed by Mr Oryono and his confrères in a simple art of buffing figures. The contractors were able to decipher the genuine and decorously filed and received withholding tax money with evidence from the Tax clearance certificate issued by URA.
Under OPM a project for the construction of a conference hall at Pakele Refugees desk office, worth shs 518m, CAO Oryono and his cronies forced the return of shs 32m as balance after completion of works according to the guidelines the money should be returned to the district pool account for re-channelling to OPM Kampala for preplanning but shs 15m out of the cash ended up in the pockets of Mr Oryono, a close confidant divulged that he forwarded the cash to his son who is studying civil engineering in a university in Malaysia.
Huge amounts of cash that were returned to the district pool account is feared to have ended in the gnawing jaws of Mr.Oryono as he has rebelliously declined to respond to queries on the funds in question including cash that accrued from bank interests from Community accounts which were to be transferred to OPM Kampala account.
The Ministry of Local Government PS Mr. Kumumanya on September 25, 2024, deployed a lone inspector to verify the earlier-on adulterated report that was submitted to his office by senior inspector Mr. Ismael Bachou in May. The inspector who met the aggrieved contractors in the council board room on September 25, 2024, instructed them to thoroughly verify all their documents of tax clearance to see if they align with the ones issued by Mr Oryono.
The inspectorate exercise however unearthed implausible scandals that were perpetuated by Mr Oryono and his acquaintances as it was discovered that the office of CAO, the DRDIP Desk officer and even the sidelined district internal audit do not have relevant records of transactions of tax clearance and the inspector had to mostly on documents adduced by the contractors.
Even now the lion-hearted CAO Mr Oryono is taunting some of the contractors with exasperating WhatsApp messages describing them as incompetent and ignorant to understand the intricacies of taxation in government and that he is leaning on a pure hard rock in the ministry this answers the lingering question of why is the PS Mr Kumumanya babysitting a man with a colossally tainted image even when evidence of stealing government funds is adduced against him?.
From the office of town clerk in Kotido district his own home sub-region, to Pader, Moyo, Kabermaido, Amuru, Buvuma, Lamwo, Apac and Adjumani districts Mr Oryono has left traits of anger, bitterness and senior officers leaking wounds refund of funds, interdictions and imprisonments, Butaleja district will most likely be the worst casualty as PS Kumumanya continue to rotate corruption in the country.
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