The State Minister for Investment, Ms Evelyn Anite, has slammed “hired detractors” in a letter to the Inspector General of Government and dismissed allegations of influence peddling, corruption and abuse of office levelled against her.

In a three-page letter dated August 19, the minister reiterated that she is not under any travel ban, confirmed the study trip to Mauritius last month and wondered why her movements “should be of interest to anyone.”

“I travelled to Mauritius from August 4 to August 11 2019 as part of a contingent of students on a three-month Senior Executive programme - Africa, run by the Harvard Business School and Gordon Institute of Business Science,” the minister’s letter reads, in part.

“The first segment of the programme is structured in a way that some class days are spent at the Harvard Campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and other segment of class days were conducted in Mauritius. The second round of the programme will be conducted in Cambridge at the Harvard Business School Campus in November later this year.”

Ms Anite’s letter follows a whistleblower’s petition last week to the Inspectorate of Government, calling for investigations into the junior minister over claims of influence peddling, abuse of office, corruption, and conduct unbecoming of a minister. 

The whistle blower informed the IGG that Ms Anite travelled to Mauritius to negotiate a secret pact to sell UTL below the market value to Mauritius Telecom. 

As evidence of her study trip to Mauritius, the minister named four “eminent Ugandans” as her classmates in the US.

“My classmates can be contacted to attest and affirm to the foregoing” the minister wrote.

She added,“I am aware, there is a group of people who have been sponsoring blackmail against me since I started demanding [an] audit into Uganda Telecom (UTL), fighting against the corrupt in UTL and in the government I diligently serve,” Ms Anite’s letter further reads.