CORRUPTION: Detectives Search MP Michael Mawanda Maranga’s Home for Three Hours

Detectives have searched the home of Michael Mawanda Maranga, the Igara East MP and Director of Mobilization  for first Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU),  after he spent the night of June 19 2024 in detention at Natete Police Station over his alleged role in a scandal involving the mismanagement of funds for cooperatives amounting to Shs164bn.

Mawanda’s arrest is part of wider probe into the theft of funds meant for cooperative societies as compensation for what they lost in cash and properties between the 1970s and mid-2000s.

In November 2023, Parliament’s Committee on Trade and Tourism its report on the alleged embezzlement Shs164bn that had been allocated to help compensate cooperative societies.

Up to 30 MPs were said to have been involved in the embezzlement as they worked closely with lawyers, including those purporting to be representing the cooperative societies.

“The Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) is taking on files, around 5 files have been identified and the good thing with it, it wasn’t only the Ministry, there are more than 30 MPs who are into this including Opposition MPs, five active opposition MPs, very talkative and noise makers will also face it rough,” said then junior trade minister Harriet Ntabazi.

“We shall also face it as a Ministry, but they will also face it. So, we aren’t scared, wherever it will end, God knows, let it unfold that way.”

Over six months later since the report was sent to CID, police arrested Mawanda, a wealthy MP closely working for Gen Muhoozi’s PLU as chief mobilizer and head of disciplinary committee.

The arrest came a day after he appended his signature to a censure motion for commissioners involved in corruption.

On June 20, detectives searched Mawanda’s home for about three hours and left off with some tightly guarded exhibits.

His three other colleagues face corruption charges for demanding a significant party of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) budget.