The first thing Stella noticed was the silence.
It wasn’t the usual kind, the quiet hum of people settling into routine, typing away, phones buzzing, printers hissing. No. This was different. It was the kind of silence that crawled up your neck and whispered, “Keep quiet. This is not your battle.”
But Stella had seen it. Clear as day.
A junior procurement officer had entered the records room and walked out with three LPO books under his shirt. She saw him tuck them into his gym bag. She told herself it was none of her business.
Until the fake supplier invoices started appearing. Names she’d never heard of. Firms no one had met. Payments made within hours of submission. And one morning, as she passed the corridor leading to the Finance Manager’s office, she overheard it:
“Just delete the last page. He’s already been paid.”
Her stomach turned.
The tipping point
Stella wasn’t new. She’d been at the NGO for six years. She knew things happened. But this was different. This wasn’t corner-cutting. It was theft. Systematic. And somehow, no one else was saying a word.
That evening, she stared at her laptop. Her cursor hovered over the whistleblower email address listed in the induction policy, an email no one had ever used. She thought of her kids. Her job. Her reputation. But then she thought of the health centres that never got the medicine. The boreholes that never got repaired. The communities that never stood a chance.
She clicked Send.
What happened next
Within 48 hours, the internal audit team contacted her using a secure channel. They brought in external investigators, our Summit Forensics team. Quietly. Discreetly. We set up a virtual mirror of the payment system. Traced the flows. Flagged the ghost vendors.
We followed the money.
Each fictitious invoice led to a shell account. Those accounts traced back to three staff members. Including the Finance Manager Stella had overheard.
The total fraud? UGX 492 million.
Why her courage mattered
Stella’s act didn’t just save money. It saved the organisation. Donors were on the verge of blacklisting it. The internal rot was already raising red flags during quarterly reviews. But the moment someone spoke, the chain broke.
We helped the organisation set up a real whistleblower program. Not just an email on paper. We trained staff. Created safe reporting lines. Quarterly fraud awareness sessions became mandatory. Every new hire had to sign a culture charter.
The culture shift
Today, that same office has a phrase painted on its wall in big bold blue:
“If you see something, say something. Silence is complicity.”
And beneath it, in smaller font:
“Because Stella did, we still exist.”
Fraud is never a one-man job. It thrives in shadows. In laughter-filled meetings where no one asks real questions. In management teams that value loyalty over integrity.
But it only takes one voice to stop it.
If you lead an organisation, don’t just train your people to detect fraud. Train them to report it. Build systems that protect the truth-tellers. Honour the ones who speak up.
Because fraud doesn’t destroy institutions.
Silence does.
IFIS Team.
