Dfcu Bank should to apologise to Eagle Online and other media houses after the bank threatened recently that it would sue them for what it called malicious information against it.
The bank has now realised that the issues that Eagle Online and others have been writing about are factual and now should make an apology to the media houses. Otherwise short of that, allegations against Eagle Online and other media house make the bank leadership and their lawyers look unserious in the eyes of the readers.
For instance, when Eagle Online some time back reported that the sale of Crane Bank Limited (CBL) by Bank of Uganda (BoU) to Dfcu Bank was controversial, both Dfcu Bank managers took that piece of information to be malicious. The recent special audit report of BoU on defunct banks as written by the Auditor General John Muwanga revealed that certain guidelines were not followed, making the transaction unclean.
Some of Muwanga’s statements read: “I observed that there were no documented guidelines/regulation or policies in place for the identification of the purchasers of the 3 defunct banks (GTB, NBC and CBL) closed using the purchase and assumption arrangement. There were also no guidelines to determine the procedures to be adopted by the Central Bank in the sale/transfer of assets and liabilities of the defunct banks to the identified purchaser. In the absence of guidelines, I could not establish the basis used to select the purchaser and determining the values of assets and liabilities transferred by BOU to the purchaser.”
“I noted that BOU did not carry out a requisite valuation of assets and liabilities of the three defunct banks (GTB. NBC and CBL) resolved using the purchase and assumption arrangement at the time of signing the P&A. In absence of the valuation and or documented evaluation of alternatives and assumptions used, I could not establish how the terms for the transfer of assets and liabilities in the P&A were determined.”
Further Eagle Online would report on the intention by Britain’s CDC Group to exit from Dfcu Bank as shareholders but the bank management came out to say all that was false news meant to tarnish the bank’s image. The top gurus at the bank would only be silenced by CDC’s Investment Director Irina Grigorenko who circulated the letter of the Group’s intention to leave.
Still Eagle Online reported of management changes at the Dfcu Bank especially after it acquired CBL via a controversial transaction but managers said nothing like that was happening there. Yet recent developments indicate that Managing Director Juma Kisaame is to be replaced by Mathias Katamba who resigned his job at Housing Finance Bank (HFB) as MD.
Another story Eagle Online published and which Dfcu contested as false is the story of the bad book which belong the the CBL which and which Dfcu took over illegally. The bad book belonged to shareholders of CBL and therefore, the shareholders are entitled to have the book so that they can collect the money and whichever security was deposited can be reclaimed by owners. However, they continued refusal could lead to legal battle between CBL shareholders and Dfcu and in particular Mr.Jimmy Mugerwa.
Dfcu should take the bull by its horns rather than hiding behind the false news crusade and like they say, TIME is the best ally and indeed as time goes on, more revelations will be made and see who was telling the truth. And as the truth unmask themselves, we will not fear to task Dfcu to clarify on the allegations that we were being used by businessman Rajiv Ruparelia.