Top BoU official pins fired Justine Bagyenda on missing vital bank sale documents

The embattled former Bank of Uganda Director for Supervision, Justine Bagyenda will have to explain to legislators where the documents regarding the sale of commercial banks are.

The Investigator has established that all fingers seem to point to the fired Bagyenda regarding the missing inventory. What we can report is that a top Central Bank official revealed to the furious legislators of Cosase, that the missing documents were perhaps picked by Bagyenda when she was fired unceremoniously by the Governor Tumusiime Mutebile, six months to her retirement.

Justine Bagyenda who is expected to appear before the committee probing the illegal closure of the seven defunct commercial banks was the executive director in charge of supervision, at the time of her sacking.

While appearing before Cosase on Tuesday, Benedict Sekabira, the Director Financial Markets Development Coordination said it is only Bagyenda who can reveal where the files are.

The Governor, Prof. Tumusiime Mutebile had initially told the Members of Parliament that he didn’t know where the documents were, prompting him to ask Sekabira to explain.

Reports from the ‘corridors’ of the central bank now hint that Bagyenda was perhaps irked by her unceremoniously departure from the heavy paying office, and thought it wise to punish the governor for his actions.

The documents allegedly picked by Ms. Bagyenda included among others inventory reports of ICB and Greenland Bank.

Some senior BoU officials have sought parliament intervention to view the CCTV footage recordings of the last days of Bagyenda at the Bank after she was told to vacate office to see how she loaded the documents into bags and departed.

Ms. Bagyenda was controversially sacked by Tumusiime- Mutebile in February 2018, six months before her official retirement. As executive director of supervision, her role was to ensure the stability of the banking industry but her boss sacked her after the Crane Bank scandal emerged.

Ms. Bagyenda was heavily involved in the controversial closure and sale of Crane Bank Limited (CBL) to its rival Dfcu Bank in January 2017 at Shs200 billion that was paid in installments, with the central bank, having spent Shs478 billions of taxpayers’ on CBL before selling it to Dfcu Bank.

Parliament’s Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (Cosase), don’t have all the required documents of defunct banks.

Sources within BoU say Ms. Bagyenda worked closely with BoU’s deputy governor Dr. Louis Kasekende in the closure and liquidation of some of the banks, for instance, CBL whose closure caused the on-going Cosase probe that so far has not gotten satisfactory answers from the BoU. The problem has been the official’s failure to avail them with all the documents related to defunct banks.