As the gigantic court battle between Bank of Uganda and businessman Sudhir Ruparelia gets underway at the commercial court tomorrow, one person stands to gain.
Justine Bagyenda, BOU’s Supervision ED since 2004 turned around in 2017 and told Ugandans the Crane Bank has in fact been breaking the law for 22 years. She cites incidences such as Crane Bank have been a one – shareholder bank.
What we now know however is that this is was a case of a deal gone wrong and mafias within government looking to profit.
The court case was greenlit by Bagyenda herself, who was looking for a kickback from the UGX13b legal fees sanctioned again by her. An insider has told us that the governor was actually out of the country when this transaction was done.
After making a mammoth mistake to take BOU to court, she went further to make a reckless decision of recruiting two seriously conflicted law firms.
MMAKS Advocates having fraudulently represented BOU and Crane Bank concurrently for over 10 years were now instructed to sue their former boss. Receipts have now emerged of Sudhir paying Masembe & Co.
A.F Mpanga or Bowmans, one of dfcu prequalified lawyer for years, was at the time of negotiating Crane Bank’s acquisition by his clients dfcu entangled in BOU and Crane Bank issues, a practically BOU lawyer. He is cited in a forensic audit report by Pwc representing BOU long before dfcu acquired Crane Bank.
This is a cartel of individuals that have stolen public funds for as long as 2004. It includes Justine Bagyenda most of the times working with Timothy Masembe of MMAKS and most recently recruited David Mpanga of Bowmans.
The bogus case was a feasting opportunity. For enabling dfcu acquire Crane Bank, they feasted big time in London. We have told they blackmailed Sudhir prior to Crane Bank takeover and forced him to surrender more than USD5m.
There thinking told them by taking the property mogul to court, they would still force to surrender some of his hard earned buildings and money. It appears that this time they thought wrong.
All this happened as BOU internal lawyers had advised against taking Sudhir and Meera to court as it would expose the weaknesses inside the central bank including corruption, collusion, incompetence, etc.
