By Our Reporter
NATIONAL
The President of National Unity Platform, (NUP), Robert Kyagulanyi, a.k.a Bobi Wine has come out to explain how eventually he was able to re-possess his bullet proof Land Cruiser without paying the excess taxes.
Kyagulanyi who was responding to accusations from a section of Ugandans that he cannot be the man to fight corruption since he accepted a bail out by President Museveni in order to regain possession of his vehicle says that Museveni never forgave him some taxes on the bullet proof vehicle.
He says, the bullet proof vehicle was legally imported and subjected to all legal processes.
“We had brought it under someone else’s name because we knew how they would react if they immediately knew it was Bobi Wine’s car,” he says.
He says the vehicle was taken to the Directorate of Interpol in Kololo and it was fully cleared and then later taken to the forensics department of police in Naguru, where it was also cleared
“Then we took it to URA and they did their own independent verification and assessed the relevant tax of 88,612,027/= which we paid in full. For several months, regime authorities raised no issue whatsoever. It was until we transferred the vehicle into my names that they panicked and tried to look for every reason to impound it’” Bobi reveals.
He says first, government claimed that bullet proof vehicles require the clearance of the ministry of defence, but there was no law to back this claim.
“After that, they wrote to us claiming that it was undervalued. They claimed that when the police first inspected it, they did not realize it was bullet-proof!!! You can imagine! They then asked us to hand it back to them, which we did in April, 2021,” he adds.
He says that following the discovery that it was his car, they sacked the URA, Interpol and Forensics staff who cleared the vehicle. Some of them were even summoned by CMI for interrogation and detained.
“The man in whose name the car was imported had to run away from the country after receiving numerous threats,” he says.
Bobi Wine explains further that they immediately sued the Commissioner General of URA through Counsel Wameli Anthony under Civil Suit No. 67 of 2021.
He says it was then that they wrote back to them claiming that the car was undervalued. They claimed that instead of the 88,612,027/= initially assessed, they should have charged 337,698,776.25/= (Over three hundred million shillings).
He says they applied for review of the outrageous tax in accordance with the law, and issued a notice to also sue them before the Tax Appeals Tribunal.
“After more than two months from the time they impounded it, they wrote to us returning the vehicle, and because they are a bunch of politicians doing Museveni’s bidding, they claimed it was him who instructed them to hand it over. Even then, they claimed that the imposed tax was still outstanding, perhaps out of shame. They have never followed it up again because they know they had no legal basis whatsoever.” He concludes.
