According to the forensic report whose particulars are wrapped in a 153-page booklet, and the same we shall serialize, the businessman did not only stop at paying peanuts for the otherwise prime Crane Bank buildings, but he made sure the wealthy landlord he had thus effectively turned into a tenant, paid cripplingly in terms of lease and ground rent as well!

To ensure that Crane Bank as an entity never ever, in future get back the buildings, Sudhir commanded, but of course fraudulently, his sidekicks working with the financial institution to have the land holding the properties converted from leasehold into freehold!

What the above means is that Sudhir obtained both the buildings and the land holding them on permanent basis as opposed to being a tenant of the same. If the reverse was true, he was supposed going forward, to pay lease fees to the landlord which was supposed to be Crane Bank Limited itself.

Seeing that the bank factually belonged to Sudhir himself, never mind the propaganda to the contrary, even an imbecile can easily figure out the awkward situation the financial institution faced while negotiating the evidently impugned deal for the simple fact that it wasn’t naturally expected to disagree with the terms set by its proprietor.

This is why regardless of the location, size or development of the buildings at stake, Sudhir, who was clearly the seller and the buyer at the same time, given his dominant position as the owner of the bank whose properties he desperately sought to convert, ended paying a flat fee of UGX100m for each and every building!

To demonstrate possibly the upper hand Sudhir boasted of in these matters, the seller was not permitted to value the properties before selling them out. Consequently, the bank lost the opportunity to place the true prices on each of the properties Sudhir ended up purchasing.

 What happened, the shrewd businessman merely conjured up figures from his bald head and then threw the prices he desired to buy the plots at! And as we all know, the bank wasn’t expected to raise a finger against its owner!

“From our interviews with senior management, the consideration for the sale of the bank’s land was not informed by an independent valuation of the land,” the forensic report has it.

Dismissing the UGX100m purchase for as pitiable, the report adds, “It is highly unusual that the bank would accept such a flat fee for each of the property sold to Meera Investments Limited (MIL) because at the time it had parcels of land worth more than this amount.”

The above line justifies our contention about the existence of an invisible hand which was actively manipulating the sale and purchase behind the scenes. That invisible hand we know was Sudhir Ruparelia the man himself. Well, to simplify the kind of profiteering Sudhir committed in these transactions, let’s quote the money the bank paid for some of the plots of land as per the bank’s Fixed Assets Register.

We go: Plot No.93 Block 7, Mengo, Kibuga Ndeeba was bought at UGX1Bn. Plot No.1 Ishaka Fort Portal Road, Cell Ward 4 was bought at 715m, Plot 55 Main Street Jinja (Ush700m), Plot22 Kampala Road Entebbe (Ush650m) Plot No88 Block18, Kibuga Nateete (Ush650m) and Plot No18, Jinja Road, Mukono (Ush619).

But, when Sudhir chose to ‘buy’ the plots, the shameless rascal paid a mere UGX100m for each of them! Since Crane Bank spent 4,334,136,000 on purchasing these plots, simple arithmetic would show the cad ended up paying a mere Ush600m for all the plots combined! And for this reason, the businessman robbed his own bank by a whopping UGX3, 734,136,000!

Yet for just two years Sudhir was the landlord, Crane Bank not only forked out a colossal USD4.6m in rent, but the apparently cowed financial institution was also made to pay twice in respect of Plot40A Kampala road. The bank paid two payments of USD237, 364.08 apiece to Meera Investments Limited (MIL) and Crane Management Services, as per an invoice recovered by the investigators. The two companies belongs to Sudhir.

But even more scandalous, the fact that Crane bank used a combined total of Ush29.8Bn to purchase the land as well as to erect the buildings Sudhir purchased as captured in its books of December 31^st 2012, it would unmistakably imply that Sudhir cheated the bank by a whopping UGX26.4Bn when he chose to purchase the properties in the manner he chose to.

Don’t drop dead yet, Sudhir not only cheated Crane Bank as we have ably illustrated above, but also went ahead and grabbed all its furniture and fittings worth a whopping UGX13.6Bn! As everyone would know, after procuring all the dirty work he procured, Sudhir now commanded his workers at Crane Bank to hide the same from the prying eyes of the Central Bank.

He instructed his workers not to reflect the losses on its books. He did so because he was understandably aware that what he had just carried out was not only criminal, but also actionable at law.

Factor in the fact that the businessman even intimidated Crane Bank into meeting all the costs that goes with transactions of this nature, including one converting it from a landlord into a tenant, to see how callous this honorary Doctor of the banana republic can be. Watch this space…  

KAMPALA, Uganda: An out-of-court-settlement has turned the trial into the unpaid Ugshs10Bn case into drama with the debtor accusing the trial judge of purportedly conspiring with the lender to pass that order without his input.

But the claim comes after the debtor failed to beat the deadline within which he was supposed to implement the settlement failure of which he was to lose several of his properties to the Diamond Trust Bank (DTB). Frank Nekuusa, known more for his exploits as a former rally driver than a business personality is the one who is slamming the charges of deceit on Justice David Wangutsi.

While he is not suing the judge, Nekuusa is making very adverse claims against Wangutsi, not to mention the fact that he is suing government demanding that it pays him damages for alleged wrongs its employer allegedly visited on him. Senior counsel Godfrey Sserunkuuma Lule is prosecuting the case on behalf of Nekuusa. DTB had not filed its defense by Friday, nor had the attorney general.

The 56-year- old soft spoken Nekuusa is based in Nalukolongo industrial where he was a flourishing steel and fuel dealer before loans scaled him down a bit whilst Justice Wangutsi is the respected head of the commercial arm of the high court.

According to our investigations, Justice Wangutsi entered the consent judgment on July 13^th this year. Nekuusa had held talks with DTB which agreed to reduce his liability down from Ugshs10Bn to Ugshs6.5Bn in a bid to avoid a protracted court trial. It’s DTB which dragged Nekuusa and his spouse, Stella to court for failure to pay up.

According to the consent, Nekuusa was supposed to clear the loan by October 22 this year short of which the bank would be at liberty to dispose of the securities- including prime pieces of land in Nalukolongo together with buildings thereon.

On one hand, Nekuusa concedes that such talks actually took place. But, he argues on the other that the talks were irregular. He contends accordingly that no legal consent can be derived from such talks. What rendered the talks irregular?

The businessman points out that whereas he has never agreed to surrender one of the securities to DTB on top of paying the Ugshs6.5Bn, the consent passed by Justice Wangutsi bears such conditionality. He accuses DTB lawyers of MMAKS and company advocates of fabricating such clause in order to grab his property.

Even if the talks had taken place, he argues how the parties never arrived at conclusive resolutions nor reduced them in black and white and later passed onto court for the trial judge to pass a final consent that would be binding on both parties.

Much as he is on record as having attended court on the day the judge passed the consent decree, Nekuusa flatly denies it. He claims how he was nowhere near Kampala let alone the precincts of court.   “I was out of the city…..at my home in Kabojja,” Nekuusa swears in a written statement to court.

All the same, Nekuusa’s lawyer attended court in his capacity as his legal representative and received the ruling for that matter. While this fact is acknowledged by Nekuusa who goes ahead and concede receiving a phone call from his lawyer asking him to attend the ruling, Nekuusa says the summon was on short notice of 15 minutes. “There is no way I could have made it to Kampala within only 15 minutes,” he contends before adding that it is procedurally wrong for a judge to call a litigant over a phone.

Is Nekuusa finding scapegoats for his failure to return the money he took from DTB? Is he witch-hunting Justice Wangutsi because he did his work of implementing what he (Nekuusa) agreed with DTB? Well Justice Richard Wejuli will provide answers to these and many questions after looking at both sides of the coin so to say. For now we can only wish that justice takes its course.