Crane Bank Robbery: Of How Sudhir Unwittingly Set Himself Up for The Looming London Mega Case Where Price Water Cooper`s Report Is Considered

Businessman Sudhir Ruparelia aka SR behaves like a baby who wants to eat his cake and keep it at the same time. He himself dug a massive hole in Crane Bank (CB), driving the financial institution into bankruptcy. Subsequently, the industry regulator, pumped a lot of public funds into the ill-fated financial institution, hoping to revive it.

To the regulator’s dismay, the entire public funds pumped into CB went to waste, considering that the financial institution never recovered from the fatal blow Sudhir had dealt it with. Subsequently, the regulator cleaned the mess he himself had in the first place created, giving CB a decent send-off.

And yet, earlier before while he was being grilled by the regulator, Sudhir had accepted in principle and in white and black, to refund the funds he had fraudulently extracted from his Bank. The late Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile and his group believed Sudhir’s word! And the wily businessman quietly laughed at their naivety.

Well, Sudhir did not honor his word and he has, amazingly, since been blaming the regulator for his failure to do so. He asserted he could not, after all refund the public funds because Mutebile’s group had leaked the agreement containing his damning confessions.

And just like that, the man walked away scot-free with the massive bank robbery ever recorded in Uganda’s banking history. And that was to be expected, for Sudhir is not a principled man. No decent man can rob his own bank. No decent person can carry fake dollars into the country. Neither can a decent man use a fake certificate of title and snap up property located right opposite the country’s State House.

And oh yes, no decent man can wait for a weekend, lift a caveat from another man’s property and then claim it as his. All those above and much more, Sudhir has done already. So how can he be counted among the decent men? Ridiculously, he has since launched into several rounds of shedding of crocodile tears, accusing almost everyone else within the central bank! Yet he has only himself to blame for bringing down Crane Bank by robbing it blind, hence leading to its closure and subsequent sale.

Sudhir purchased John Patrick Amama Mbabazi and friends’ defunct bank, in much the same fashion that he accuses Dfcu of having purchased his Crane Bank, from the Central Bank. Amama possessed money and was ready to invest the balance of merely fifty million shillings in capital to rescue his bank from being closed.

But the then larger-than-life and fired up supervisor of Commercial Banks at Central Bank, Justine Bagyenda, told the former Super Minister and Prime Minister of the time, to keep his money and his mouth shut. She then sold off his bank to Sudhir Ruparelia. One would have henceforth expected Sudhir, who had previously purchased Amama’s bank in a rather fraudulent manner, to abide by the rule of Karma, and therefore resign to his woes other than shedding crocodile tears and suing the Central Bank and Dfcu, over his Crane Bank sale.

After all, not only Sudhir was since been awarded more than UGX200Bn in damages by the courts, in the case of the Central Bank, but the courts also returned Crane Bank to him, though, minus a license permitting it to resume business. Be that as it may, and despite escaping from being prosecuted over billions of shillings extracted from his bank, and in spite of eventually being awarded by the courts several dozens of billions in damages, Sudhir has since dragged Dfcu to the courts in London, thirsting over more money!

For the record, the courts in Uganda based on form other than substance. They dismissed the Central Bank’s case against Sudhir. Put the other way, the judges rejected to assess the evidence of the Central Bank and Sudhir, to ultimately make a balanced and just opinion in regards to who was liable between them, and in regards to the collapse of Crane Bank.

On the contrary, the judges bought into Sudhir’s deeply contentious argument! He had averred that since the Central Bank had leaked his confessions and pledge to refund what he had extracted from Crane Bank, he was no longer liable to honor his pledge! Buoyed by the court victories in Uganda, Sudhir has since taken on Dfcu in London, hoping to make more money, riding on the closure and eventual sale of his Bank.

If he hoped as well to have it easy in London, he was mistaken. Whereas his lawyers in Uganda exploited the weaker laws, aiding him to walk away scot-free in regards to the Central Bank case, Judges in London are not going to permit Sudhir to bulldoze them into easily granting his wishes.

In fact, the suede tycoon will soon than later realize his mistake of taking his issues to London. Dfcu is going to exploit his own case to conduct a nice job of undressing Sudhir, exposing to the entire world the unorthodox, dirty and mafioso manner in which Sudhir used to conduct banking business under the cover of Crane Bank.

By the time Dfcu will be done with him, his investments in London and the rest of the normal world would have suffered quite a lot of damage. Whereas Sudhir manipulated Judges here in Uganda, dismissing the Central Bank case without recourse to the Price Water Cooper’s Audit report, portraying the massive financial mismanagement that had rocked Crane Bank, leading to its collapse, their London counterparts have since permitted Dfcu to table the said audit report, signaling the bad PR lying in store for Sudhir.

To show the deep-seated fear he holds, stemming from the use of the damning audit report, Sudhir’s team of lawyers prior to the same being accepted as evidence by the London Court, had put up formidable resistance against Dfcu tabling the same on the floor of the court here. Compellingly, such was the fear this audit report sparked on part of Sudhir when this mighty investigative website put bits of the information contained therein in the public domain, that the businessman recruited mafias, hacking into and ultimately disabling this website.

To compound matters, Dfcu has since landed another big preliminary victory with the court in London permitting them to scrutinize Sudhir’s and his daughter, Sheena Ruparelia’s mobile phones for evidence implicating them in running the bank in a mafia manner.

As can be expected, he, through his lawyers in London put up resistance but failed to manipulate the London Judge to disallow Dfcu from basing on the evidence extracted from their phones to beef their defence. As the London court prepares to hear the case without recourse to form but substance, the world is waiting to see how the Ugandan Tycoon and his lawyers are going to navigate the evidence contained in the Price Water Cooper’s audit report and the one contained in his and Sheena’s personal mobile phones.

For the time being, we can dare hazard a guess that given how the judge has conducted business in Sudhir`s case against Dfcu so far, the man is in for a big embarrassment and he, and his lawyers need to pull up their socks in order to mitigate the looming damage. May substance as opposed to merely form prevail at the end of the day… Enjoy the hearing of the case.

Author Profile

Stanley Ndawula: Stanley Ndawula is a two and a half decades’ seasoned investigative journalist with a knack for serious crimes investigations and reporting. He’s the Founding Editorial Director and CEO at The Investigator Publications (U) Limited