A confidential audit report obtained from inside Uganda’s Free Zones and Export Promotions Authority has uncovered what investigators describe as a serious breakdown in financial oversight, with eight fuel cards collectively loaded with more than Shs 348 million over the course of a single year. The report, dated September 14, 2026, was commissioned by the authority’s Board in July and has since set off alarm bells about how public money moves through one of Uganda’s key trade promotion bodies.
The Numbers That Triggered the Investigation
The inquiry began on July 24, 2026, after the UFZEPA Board received concerns about fuel management practices, office imprest handling, and allegations that money had gone missing. What investigators found when they looked closely at just eight selected fuel cards was striking enough to fill a report that lands with the weight of an institution in crisis.
According to the confidential audit findings first reported by ChimpReports, six fuel cards registered under the name Sharon Keitetsi Nangiro were loaded with a combined Shs 272.37 million. A separate card linked to Deo Kyomya carried Shs 75.9 million. And a card held by an accountant named Fiona Kesiime had Shs 12.3 million allocated to it. These are not incidental sums. Taken together, they represent a significant slice of public resources flowing through a narrow band of card holders, with investigators questioning multiple withdrawals recorded at filling stations across the period under review.
No Policy, No Manual, No Guardrails
Perhaps the most damning detail in the entire audit is not the money itself but what was absent when the money was moving. UFZEPA, an authority tasked with managing Uganda’s free zones and driving export growth, operated throughout this period without an approved fleet management policy. It also had no Finance and Accounting Manual in place.
That is not a minor administrative gap. A fleet management policy exists precisely to govern who gets fuel, how much, when, and under what conditions. Without one, every transaction becomes discretionary, and discretion without documentation is where public funds quietly disappear. Internal Audit Manager Peter Omwine put it plainly in his report to the Board: the findings point to inadequate internal control systems across the board.
“The findings indicate that in all circumstances, there are inadequate internal control systems in place,” Omwine wrote, language that is measured in tone but devastating in implication.
Staff Getting Fuel Cards Whether They Own Cars or Not
One specific finding deserves its own moment of pause. Investigators established that UFZEPA staff received quarterly fuel allocations loaded onto cards regardless of whether those staff members actually owned or operated a vehicle. The audit report notes that such fuel may have been converted into transport cash rather than used for official government work.
Read that again slowly. An authority distributing fuel money to people who may not have cars. It is the kind of detail that sounds almost too careless to be intentional, and yet it appears to have continued on a quarterly cycle, undetected or unaddressed, until a Board inquiry forced the matter into the open.
What This Says About Institutional Culture
Financial scandals at government bodies rarely appear out of nowhere. They tend to surface at institutions where the gap between policy on paper and practice on the ground has been allowed to widen over years. When an authority has no accounting manual and no fleet policy, it is not an accident waiting to happen. It is an environment designed, whether by neglect or intent, to make accountability nearly impossible.
UFZEPA occupies a genuinely important position in Uganda’s economic architecture. Free zones are meant to attract foreign investment, reduce trade barriers, and generate jobs. The credibility of that mandate depends, at least in part, on the credibility of the institution administering it. A Shs 348 million fuel card anomaly does not just raise questions about money. It raises questions about governance at the very body meant to signal Uganda’s seriousness to international investors and trade partners.
What Comes Next
The Board ordered this investigation. The internal audit manager has delivered his findings. The report now sits on the table, specific in its numbers and unambiguous in its warnings. What matters from here is whether UFZEPA’s leadership treats this as a turning point or as another report to be quietly filed.
Genuine corrective action would require, at minimum, the immediate adoption of a fleet management policy, the introduction of a Finance and Accounting Manual, a thorough review of all fuel card allocations going back further than the twelve months sampled, and transparent accountability for the individuals whose cards show the most significant withdrawals. It would also require the kind of independent external scrutiny that internal audit reports alone cannot provide.
Uganda’s Office of the Auditor General and the relevant parliamentary oversight committees have the tools to take this further. Whether they choose to act on what this report has surfaced is the question that will define whether the Shs 348 million figure remains a scandal or becomes a footnote.
For Ugandans who fund institutions like UFZEPA through their taxes, the ask is simple: accountability should not require a leak. What mechanisms are you, as a citizen, willing to demand so that the next fuel card audit never reaches Shs 348 million before anyone notices?
