Judge: URA Wrongfully Fired David Kalemera Despite Evidence of Tax Scheme

Uganda’s Industrial Court has ruled that the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) unlawfully dismissed former customs officer David Kalemera, awarding him about 51 million shillings, even as the judgment lays out extensive internal audit findings that link him to a major tax-evasion and transit-diversion scheme.

Justice Anthony Wabwire Musana said URA had strong reasons to believe Kalemera engaged in serious misconduct, but violated fair-hearing requirements and its own Human Resource Manual when it terminated him in 2017.

“For a dismissal to be lawful, it must be both procedurally and substantively fair. While the dismissal was substantively justified, it was procedurally unfair and unlawful,” he wrote.

In 2024, President Museveni appointed Kalemera as the State House Revenue Intelligence and Strategic Operations Unit to provide “oversight on URA operations and fight corruption within the tax administration system,” sparking a social media firestorm over his controversial record at URA.

A year later, Kalemera was transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under mysterious circumstances.

The ruling outlines a long-running URA investigation into a transit-diversion network involving foreign traders, clearing agents and insiders in customs operations.

The case centred on a consignment of fabric declared for re-export to the Democratic Republic of Congo but instead diverted to Sunbelt Textiles Co. Ltd in Jinja, resulting in an estimated 518 million shillings in lost tax revenue.

URA’s Internal Audit and Compliance Directorate found that the diversion was carefully coordinated and that several individuals connected to the cargo maintained suspicious interactions with Kalemera.