Prince Karim AL-Husayn Shah commonly referred to as Aga Khan is the one in the eye of the storm over the alleged fraudulent tendencies of Diamond Trust Bank (Uganda).

A magistrate in Kampala issued the summons to Aga Khan after one of Uganda’s youngest tycoons, Hamis Kiggundu filed four criminal charges against the wealthy man who is also a patriarch of the Ismailia faith, arising out of a bank fraud via which he lost close to two hundred billion shillings.

Aga Khan is required to appear in the Kampala City Council Authority magistrates court on September 28, according to summons dated September 13.

“Whereas your attendance is necessary in court to answer to charges of theft contrary to Section 254 of the Penal Code Act Cap 120, making false entries in financial ledgers contrary to Section 47(1) and (3) of the Financial Institutions Act 2004, electronic fraud contrary to Section 19 of the Computer Misuse Act, uttering false documents contrary to Section 351 of the Penal Code Act Cap 120 and conspiracy to commit a felony contrary to Section 390 of the Penal Code Act Cap 120, you are hereby commanded by the Uganda Government to appear in this court on September 28, 2021 at 10.00am or soon thereafter as the case can be heard,” reads the two paged criminal summons.

Aga Khan is wanted in court together with the Group CEO and MD of Diamond Trust Bank Kenya, Nassim Mohamed Devji and the Uganda Diamond Trust Bank CEO, Varghese Thambi and John Sitakange, the bank’s Head of Credit in Uganda.

Meanwhile, Ham wants court to find Aga Khan and his co-suspects incompetent to run the business of a financial institution for falsely filing statements with the central bank concealing the fraud that was being committed against him.

Ham’s lawyers of Muwema and company advocates filed the criminal charges on behalf of their client. “The above persons who are the directing mind of the bank had knowledge of the illegal transactions and they bear criminal liability for the approval and concurrence in committing the deception and fraud on the complainant’s bank accounts,” reads a written statement by Ham.

Because of the above actions and omissions Ham continues, “the four do not meet the criteria and they are not fit and proper persons to win, control and manage the bank or any other financial institution in accordance with the 3^rd Schedule of the Financial Institutions Act, 2004”

He adds further, “That DTB as a licensed and regulated financial institution has violated all ethical, legal standards and norms of prudential regulation and it meets conditions for revocation of its banking license by the central bank pursuant to the Financial Institutions Act 2004.”

For starters, Ham is suing the bank already for allegedly stealing from his Uganda shillings and dollar accounts under the cover of recovering loans which he says he had fully paid.

Justice Henry Adonyo cancelled the agreements over which Ham borrowed the money after discovering that DTB Kenya through DTB Uganda lent the money without a license from Bank of Uganda.

The judge ordered the two banks to release the titles and properties which Ham pledged while receiving the impugned loans. DTB appealed the ruling.

The ten-year-customer bank relationship turned frosty after Ham engaged accountants in 2019 who caused an audit and discovered that DTB had clandestinely and illicitly debited his accounts by a whopping 34,295,951,553 shillings and by 23,467,670.61 United States dollars.

Upon the accountants delivering the shocking report complete with actual amounts debited and the days on which they were scammed off, Ham wrote to DTB on November 16, 2019 seeking for rectification of the fraudulent withdrawals, but the bank ignored him.

He reminded the bank to remedy the fraud by another letter of January 10, 2020. “The bank still ignored the above request for a full account and reconciliation and yet this would have given the bank an opportunity to explain and or correct the false entries in the bank statements,” Ham contends via a written statement dated September 8, 2021.

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.