Overview:
Speaking from outside Luzira Prison, where he was serving a 12-year term for causing a financial loss of 3.1 billion shillings to the Fund, Jamwa, clad in a blue t-shirt, jeans with shades, expressed gratitude to the President for exercising his prerogative powers to pardon him.
Former Managing Director of the National Social Security Fund David Chandi Jamwa has said he was surprised by President Museveni’s decision to pardon him, leading to his release from prison.
Speaking from outside Luzira Prison, where he was serving a 12-year term for causing a financial loss of 3.1 billion shillings to the Fund on Thursday, Jamwa, clad in a blue t-shirt, jeans with shades, expressed gratitude to the President for exercising his prerogative powers to pardon him.
“I would like to thank the President for his magnanimity, benevolence, kindness, mercy and love, I will continue to thank him,” he said.
“It was surreal, it came as a surprise. I have got to catch up life outside prison. I lost many relatives, including a daughter, so there is a lot to catch up on,” he added.
On his prison experience, Jamwa said: “It is difficult but is also character building. It is an experience that builds you for the better.”
His mother, Tezira Jamwa, a former member of the Constituent Assembly and Woman MP for Tororo, thanked the president for his “fatherly love” leading to her son’s release from prison.
Jamwa was in 2011 indicted by the High court on two counts of abuse of office and causing financial loss contrary to the Anti-Corruption Act 2009. He was tried and convicted of causing financial loss in 2007 but was acquitted of the offence of abuse of office. He was then sentenced to 12 years imprisonment and barred from holding any public office for 10 years.
Then Anti-Corruption court judge, John Bosco Katutsi did not however order Jamwa to refund the money that NSSF lost in the sale of bonds. The court held the state did not prove that Jamwa benefited from the financial loss. The rose came after Jamwa sanctioned the sale of NSSF bonds to the now-defunct Crane bank before their maturity. He appealed to the Court of Appeal against the conviction and sentence while the attorney general also appealed to the Court Appeal against the acquittal.
The two appeals were consolidated and Jamwa’s appeal was subsequently dismissed. He was instead sentenced to 4 years imprisonment for the offence of abuse of office which was to run concurrently with the 12 years imposed by the trial judge for the offence of causing financial loss. Jamwa had after running out of other options resorted to serving the sentence.