By Kagenyi Lukka
Under fire DFCU’s Managing Director Juma Kisaame was in the news from Friday last week after it emerged that he had $40 million stashed on his account in bank of Africa.
The copies of the statement which made rounds on social media and other news outlets triggered off peeved reaction from many who questioned the source of money on Kisaame’s fat account.
Another irritated audience didn’t dither to ask if there was a connection between the fraudulent purported buying of crane bank and Kisaame’s monies.
The viral news of Julius Kisaame’s fat accounts came after a recently released special audit report on defunct commercial banks.
The report dated August 27, 2018 by Mr. John Muwanga, the auditor general exposed traits of shoddiness in the deal that saw Dfcu acquire crane bank at an unconvincing price of a paltry credit of Shs200 billion shillings payable till 2020.Crane bank limited belonged to city tycoon Dr Sudhir Ruparelia.
The special report in particular chronicled how there was no independent valuation of the assets and liabilities of crane bank which would have helped bank of Uganda to establish the value of crane bank before donating it to crane bank.
Could Kisaame be a beneficiary of this deal where he determined how much he paid for CBL?
“On April 10, 2018, I requested for P&A agreement, including details of the assets and liabilities transferred after taking into account the requisite valuation. I noted that BoU did not carry out a valuation of the assets and liabilities of CBL. In the absence of the valuation, I could not establish how the terms for the transfer of assets and liabilities in the P&A were determined.”
In a meeting with the BoU’s outgoing executive director of supervision held on June 13, 2018, at BoU offices, the directors admitted that the BoU did not carry out a valuation of the CBL assets and liabilities but relied on inventory report and the due diligence undertaken by Dfcu to arrive at P&A agreement, Mr. John Muwanga noted.
Bank of Africa should not panic but let police and FIA to investigate.
This is not the first time that Banking officials are in such scandals.
Recently, beleaguered former executive director for commercial bank supervision at BoU Justine Bagyenda’s Shs18 billion accounts caused uproar and some banks dismissed as fake news of her leaked bank statements.
In the same vein, Bank of Africa came up with a dry and panicky statement dismissing the authenticity of the account Kisaame’s account statement, ‘Bank of Africa would like to inform its esteemed customers and the general public that the financial documents supposedly belonging to Mr. Juma Kisaame, circulating on social media platforms are maliciously fabricated and should be disregarded, “the statement read in part.
This is understandable because every institution would want to always remain free of dirt but a mere statement of apology/clarification to a client doesn’t exonerate him/her.
And as the old adage goes that, ‘there is no smoke without fire’. Responsible institutions have an onerous task of investigating the source of smoke-Kisaame’s healthy account.
That Kisaame holds an account at Bank of Africa is sufficient enough for the Financial Intelligence Authority and police to get interested commence an investigation to prove the validity of such reports.
Kagenyi Lukka is a current affairs analyst
Lukka.kagenyi@gmail.com