Kuku Foods Uganda Limited, which runs Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) restaurants in Uganda, has filed a formal complaint with the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) about a recent raid on its offices by armed investigation officers.
They called it a “disproportionate” and “enforcement-style operation” that has seriously hurt investor confidence. The strongly-worded letter, which was sent to the URA Commissioner General John Musinguzi and copied to President Yoweri Museveni and the minister of Finance Matia Kasaija, describes what happened on November 19, 2025, as a “security raid” rather than a normal tax inquiry.
The protest note says that officers from URA’s investigation department “stormed” the Kuku Foods offices in Kololo with guns during regular business hours. The company said that the scene “caused significant alarm among our staff,” and that officers searched workspaces and stayed on the property until as late as 11 p.m.
The letter says, “The way the officers moved through the office… did not look like a normal tax inquiry.”
Kuku claims they were shocked by the use of force and said that any information requested could have been “provided promptly and lawfully upon proper request, without resorting to measures that go far beyond what the law envisions.”
The company says that officers took data from their systems without showing that they were following the Data Protection and Privacy Act, claiming the tax regulator may have broken the law by not protecting customer and employee information. But the main point of their protest is the time period being looked into July 2019 to December 2023.
The business says that the time period from July 2019 to February 2022 has already been fully audited, with the results coming out in March 2023.
The letter adds, “That matter was closed,” and it says that Kuku Foods quickly paid the assessment that URA gave them. The company says that reopening a finished audit is only allowed by law in “narrow statutory limits,” like when there is credible evidence of fraud or wilful neglect.
It says that the URA has not made these points clear.
“A finished audit has legal meaning. The company said, “It gives both the taxpayer and the authority peace of mind.”
Reopening it without a legal reason “undermines the stability and reliability of URA’s administrative decisions” and makes things very uncertain for multinational investors. Kuku Foods said that the raid was part of a “growing pattern of adversarial conduct” over the past three years.
This includes having to go through the same audits over and over again and being “removed from the list of withholding tax exempt taxpayers without explanation”, even though they were eligible.
The letter was used by the company to show how much it helped Uganda’s economy. Kuku Foods says that as of October 2025, it directly employs about 600 Ugandans and has paid over Shs 24.7 billion in direct and indirect taxes in the last ten months alone.
It has also bought more than Shs 43 billion worth of goods and services from local suppliers.
The letter says, “Despite this and being one of Uganda’s biggest taxpayers, we have seen a growing pattern of hostile behaviour.”
TAKING LEGAL ACTION
Kuku Foods has given URA five days to give them written proof that the investigation will only cover the period from March 2022 to December 2023, which has not yet been audited.
They also want to know that all future dealings will be “within the bounds of established legal standards.”
If this doesn’t happen, the company said it would have to “seek the protection of the law.” The protest ends with a warning about how this could affect Uganda’s investment climate as a whole.
The letter says, “When an investor who pays this much in taxes, creates jobs, buys things locally, and builds capital is met with enforcement-style operations instead of structured dialogue, it sends a very troubling signal.”
“This view does not fit with Uganda’s goal of attracting and keeping long-term investment.”
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