NBS TV is in the process of dragging tax body, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) to court for what it terms as a maliciously conducted raid on the broadcaster’s offices where property was destroyed and loads of content lost.
In the recent days, reports have emerged in the media alleging that the television station has been defaulting in its tax remittances, which prompted URA to raid NBS TV’s Kamwokya based offices in pursuit of information said to have been concealed by management.
One of the online news sites reported that Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has for the past three days camped at NBS seeking information and “to establish Kin Karisa’s tax compliance, especially after several staff left the company in the past one year or so with several grievances”.
The site further alleged that staffers at the Kamwokya based offices had hidden some computers believed to have contained information of key importance to the tax body.
However, NBS has since dismissed these claims which management say are ill intended, to misrepresent facts about the URA operation.
While NBS does not contest the fact that URA visited their offices on Thursday last week to seek information, the broadcaster says it still waits to be informed of the tax man’s findings.
What led to the raid?
In as much as the fact that URA raided NBS offices is not in contest, this website has since learnt that the bone of contention was far from the broadcaster’s compliance to tax remittance.
It is a bit baffling that an entity that was rewarded by URA during last year’s tax appreciation week would be the same entity suddenly defaulting on tax.
Trusted sources inside NBS have revealed that the raid was connected to a scandal unearthed by an ongoing investigation by the broadcaster in which some officials at URA together with a regional bank and a local car leasing company allegedly cost Uganda revenue in excess of Shs 20 billion in uncollected taxes.
For the last two months, NBS has been investigating the matter of national importance.
From what the source who preferred anonymity for fear of reprisal said, NBS discovered that the proprietor of the car leasing company acquired a loan from the said bank to supply American cars sold here in Uganda to a multinational oil and gas company currently operating in Uganda.
According to the initial terms, the bank was supposed to be remitting Value Added Tax (VAT) to URA for a four year period, but it defaulted on its payments totaling to Ush 20 billion. The NBS investigation had among other things been probing into possible collusion between URA and the financial institution to evade taxes.
Later, the proprietor of the car leasing firm found difficulty in servicing his loan and suffered a heart attack which forced him into a comma and was admitted in India.
To the authorities at the bank in question, the debtor had died and soon, they would hurriedly sell off his property (cars) to pay his outstanding debt. When he finally recovered, returned to Uganda and approached the bank to find out why his assets had been sold off, the authorities were shocked to see a person they considered to have died.
However, the chips fell when the financially strained businessman brought the grievance to the attention of President Yoweri Museveni, who would then summon officials from URA, Central Bank, the businessman and the oil company for a meeting.
Our source at NBS said that the meeting agreed that the issue be resolved in the shortest time possible but which never happened.
It is at this point that NBS learnt about the issue and took interest in investigating it.
URA hits back
This website now understands that when the tax body learnt that the broadcaster was at the brink of exposing the story, they made an effort to frustrate the effort in a bid to prevent a possible scandal.
Some NBS reporters were reportedly intimidated by officials from URA threatening them to kill the story or be dealt with.
“On Thursday last week, a team of eight raided NBS offices and asked to look at our records. But to our surprise, they later said they wanted to also look at our servers,” our source said.
He said that they could not understand how an operation to verify compliance suddenly led to wanting to check the servers which ideally store data (content).
According to our source, what had started as a simple exercise to crosscheck records turned into URA enforcers turning the place upside down which resulted into about 7 terabytes of data of content being destroyed.
Legal action
It is this inappropriate conduct that has forced NBS to resort to legal action.
“The raid was suspicious and malicious. Why destroy out files and content?” Joe Kigozi, the Head of Strategy for Next Media, a multimedia company that includes NBS TV and other subsidiaries told this website.
SoftPower News understands that NBS has instructed their lawyers to sue URA for the damages and losses caused in last week’s raid.
“We are not afraid of any investigation. NBS is a law abiding company of Uganda and adheres to all regulations,” Kigozi said.
Another source at the television, attributed the witch hunt to ‘mafia’ who are trying to sabotage the investigation.
“Some mafia are trying to get to us for investigating that story but we shall not be intimidated,” the source said.
When SoftPower News sought a comment from URA on why it raided NBS TV and why their officers reportedly intimidated NBS staff, they denied knowledge of this.
“I have no idea what you are saying,” Ian Rumanyika the Manager Public & Corporate Affairs at URA told this website.
Regarding the probe that the NBS TV investigative desk is said to have been undertaking for the last two months, Rumanyika said he had no idea about that as well.
It is a bit baffling that an entity that was rewarded by URA during last year’s tax appreciation week would be the same entity suddenly defaulting on tax
Meanwhile, NBS TV has warned that it could take action at an appropriate time against online news outlets should it be found that the “slanderous” articles published on the issue amount to criminality.
