Uganda’s Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi has accepted substantial damages from the Daily Mail after it falsely claimed he and his “cronies” siphoned off millions of dollars of foreign aid, according to a High Court judgement.
The tabloid has also issued a public apology over two stories that appeared in the newspaper and on its website late last year.
Britain suspended all aid to the Ugandan government in November after Uganda’s auditor general found that €10 million (RM42.7 million) of aid from major Western donors had been funnelled into officials’ bank accounts.
But it was staff in Mbabazi’s office that came under suspicion rather than the prime minister himself as reported by the Daily Mail, which runs one of the world’s most popular news websites.
The Court heard that on 31 October 2012, the Daily Mail published an article headed “£10m foreign aid went to cronies of Ugandan PM” and on the same day, MailOnline published an article headed “Britain and Ireland suspend aid to Uganda after £10m of funding ends up in Prime Minister’s account”.
Andrew Stephenson, solicitor for the Prime Minister, told the court that the Auditor General in Uganda had produced a Report which had revealed irregularities, fraud and forgery on the part of staff working within the Office of the Prime Minister.
He further noted that “There was no suggestion in the Report that the Prime Minister was responsible for, or benefitted from, the theft of the money.”
Julian Darrall, solicitor for Associated Newspapers, confirmed that the publisher had undertaken not to repeat the allegations and agreed to pay the Prime Minister a substantial sum in damages and the legal costs. On behalf of the publisher, he apologised for the offence caused.
Speaking today from his office in Kampala, Mbabazi said: “I was shocked that these headlines were published in the English press. Neither I nor my friends benefitted from the acts of fraud and forgery.”
He added: “On the contrary it was at my direction, through the Permanent Secretary of the Office of Prime Minister, that the Auditor General’s investigation was instigated. Far from being involved or implicated in theft, I was responsible for the process which exposed the serious offences which have resulted, in June this year, in the conviction and sentencing of the former Principal Accountant.”
Mbabazi has accepted substantial undisclosed damages from the Daily Mail’s publisher Associated Newspapers, the court heard, while the articles have been taken down from its website.
MailOnline recorded more than 120 million unique visits from users around the globe last month, according to figures released last week by the British media monitor ABC.
Denmark, Norway and Ireland also suspended millions of dollars of funding to Uganda over the missing aid, which was meant to go to parts of the country that were ravaged by its civil war.
A guerrilla campaign was waged between 1987 and 2006 in Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army, which became notorious for kidnapping children and forcing them to become child soldiers.
Uganda has repaid some of the misappropriated funding to donors including Sweden and Norway.
