Members of Parliament will on Thursday sit again to quiz top Bank of Uganda officials are regards the closure of commercial banks. However, according to a section of the legislators on the
Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE), want the grilling to be more focused on the supervision department and its former heads on how they came to arrive at the closure and sale of the banks when there was no inventory.
On November 2, 2018, Cosase kicked Tumusiime-Mutebile and his staff for failure to bring all the required documents. The MPs on the committee were surprised again on Monday that the bank officials did not again come with all the documents, more so those relating to Teefe Trust Bank.
Committee chairperson Abdu Katuntu yesterday tasked the newly recruited Executive Director for Supervision Dr. Tumubweine Twinomanzi to present the required documents by 1PM on Wednesday and ordered that the BoU team appears again on Thursday at 10 am without fail.
Rubaga North legislator Moses Kasibante told Eagle Online that failure by the BoU team on Monday meant that they have no document to show and therefore, those who were in charge of the supervision department be held responsible.
“We are talking about banks that were closed before they failed to adhere to the normal standards. Now we are speaking to people who are confessing that there is something wrong with supervision at BoU. When BoU explained to the AG at the time if this report, it promised to search in the archives. When we were here last time, it asked for two days and got four. Now it is confession that this bank has no reason why it closed Teefe. Was the inventory report misplaced or it was never there?”
And accordingly those to be held responsible are former Executive Directors in charge of supervision department, Justine Bagyenda and Dr. Louis Kasekende who first served in that position before being appointed Deputy Governor. Another person of interest to legislators is Ben Sekabira, director financial markets.
According to sources in the COSASE committee, legislators believe that with the necessary documents being deliberately left out, the three should take oath and narrate how the transactions where conducted. MPs believe the three have a case to answer in the matter of these banks.
Bank of Uganda has failed to provide the Auditor General (AG) details of the liquidation of Teefe Trust Bank in 1993 as it deemed the commercial bank insolvent at the time.
“I was not availed with the Inventory report, loan schedules, customer deposit schedules and Statements of affairs of Teefe Trust Bank to enable me to fulfill the specific audit objectives.
Due to this limitation, I could not assess the status of the assets and liabilities of Teefe Trust Bank from closure to date,” the AG John Muwanga says in his report he signed on August 27, 2018 and now lies before parliament for debate.
It should be remembered that in a letter ref A8:70/288101 dated November 28, 2017 the Parliamentary Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE); requested the AG to undertake a special audit on the closure of Teefe Trust Bank and six others commercial banks by BoU.
Kasekende tries to block investigations
On April 19, 2018, Kasekende wrote to the AG stating that an investigative audit into BoU would go against the sub-judice rule as the case between Crane Bank and BoU is court.
The Solicitor General, Atoke, on May 2, 2018 affirmed Kasekende’s letter, concurring with Kasekende that an investigation into the sale of Crane Bank would offend the subjudice rule and therefore told BoU not to cooperate with the AG or parliament.
In the letter dated May 10, 2018 and addressed to the Auditor General John F.S Muwanga, the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga urged that BoU had never produced any report concerning the sale of defunct banks such as Teefe Bank, Greenland Bank, International Credit Bank, Cooperative Bank, National Bank of Commerce, Global Trust Bank and Crane Bank.
“The request from the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) is premised on the finding by that committee that there has never been any report by the Bank of Uganda on the defunct banks,” Kadaga said in the letter then.