Daily Mail
March 15, 2014
A Ugandan benefit fraudster who stole £4million from the British taxpayer is claiming asylum because of the disgrace she faces if she was sent home.
Ruth Nabuguzi is insisting that relatives are angry at the shame she has brought on them through her criminal activities here.
Nabuguzi was accused of an ‘outrageous abuse of the hospitality’ shown to her by Britain when she – along with a gang of other fraudsters – was convicted of stealing more than £4.1million from taxpayers.
The 20-year scam saw her gang create fake identities for up to 100 children to milk the benefits system.
She was yesterday ordered by a judge to pay back £1.5million of the money she stole or face having her six-year jail sentence doubled.
Nabuguzi had also claimed to have HIV and Aids to receive costly drugs which she then sent back to Uganda to be sold to genuine victims at a huge profit.
It was estimated that supplying the medicines to her, as well as four other made-up patients, cost the taxpayer more than £2million.
Now, in a further twist to her case, the Daily Mail has learned that Nabuguzi plans to make an asylum application in a bid to halt deportation. When she was jailed in November 2012 she was told that she would be kicked out of the country.
Immigration sources have said that Nabuguzi claims her life could be ‘in danger’ if she returned to Uganda because of the ‘ill will’ felt towards her for the shame she has brought upon her family.
‘She has repeatedly said people who know her might wish to harm her when she returns to Kampala,’ said an immigration source. When the Nabuguzi case was first heard two years ago it emerged some £154,000 went on education for members of the ‘family’.
Fraud relating to accommodation costs and sub-letting of flats by Nabuguzi cost £650,000, and the family’s benefits, including child allowances, disability benefits, and council tax totalled £900,000