By Spy Uganda Investigations Desk
It’s a tough time for former Ericsson manager and Orient Bank client, Hamba Coreen who has so far been in Luzira prison for three months without being produced before court.
To bring you up to speed, Coreen was abducted by a drone car by four masked masculine men in Entebbe at the school gate as she dropped her kid to school at around 5:45 am.
This shocking incident happened in June 2024 on claims that she had defaulted approximately Ugx100m from I&M Bank, a bank she was hearing for the first time.
“I have never even heard about I &M Bank in my life, I have never taken a loan from them, but they simply roughed me up without allowing me to explain myself, forcefully pushed me into a waiting tinted drone car and sped off to where I couldn’t know, all I heard from them was directing some people on phone that we’re at commercial court,” she narrated to our Chief Spy on Tuesday who visited her in Luzira prisons.
In her narration, Coreen says she got a salary loan from Orient Bank in 2013 amounting to about Ugx60m and cleared it fully in the agreed time.
In fact, that when Orient was closing, it called all its clients including Coreen asking her whether they still needed their accounts to continue, so that they could be passed on to the new bank [I&M].
She says before responding she asked them whether she owed the Bank anything, to which the bank assured her that to the best of their knowledge, she had completed her loan. After that assurance Coreen told the Bank to close her account since the Bank itself in which she had built rapport with was closing.
However to her surprise, she says later on, new people started contacting her reminding her that she had an outstanding debt of Ugx 99,402,948/= (Uganda Shillings Ninety Nine Millions, Four Hundred Two Thousand Nine Hundred Forty-Eight Shillings) with I&M bank something that left her deeply confused and as a result of this, she asked the person who contacted her to provide her with a detailed summary of the so-called debt which the person declined to provide.
Coreen says a week later, at around 5:45 am as she took her P.6 child for preps at school in Entebbe, she was abducted by unknown men and without telling her anything bundled her into a standby tinted drone car and drove her at a terrific speed to Kampala where she was first held in cells and later rushed to Commercial Court and as if the judge was on a mission with the bank, she was without any explanation ordered to pay Ugx 99,402,948/= to I&M bank or go to jail in Luzira and that not even a chance to defend self was granted to her.
”Since my detention in June 2024, I have been trying to get in touch with my lawyers in vain, not until I was visited by a relative whom the teachers called at school as they could not reach me to go pick up my child and I got the opportunity to send them to my lawyers,” says Coreen.
Meanwhile, the child Coreen had dropped at school remained stranded at school for a whole night, she slept there with no one to pick her, the school struggled until they got a relative on the second day, she narrated with teary eyes.
“The abductors never bothered about the child they saw me dropping at school, even when I tried explaining to them,” she added.
After sending her to Luzira, Coreen says; ”I have never been served with the court process, the summary suit plaint or even the summons for me to seek leave of the court to appear and defend myself, they just kept me in Luzira and keep visiting me, threatening me to pay or I rot in jail, for a loan I never took from them. Since then, agents of this bank have been coming here trying to persuade me to accept this case so that I can be set free. All they want is to fraudulently take the small house I had built for my children. That’s their target, nothing else, yet I’m a single mother suffering with my children”.
Meanwhile, Coreen through her lawyers of M/S Nabukenya, Mulalira & Co. Advocates has since issued a notice of motion to the High Court (Commercial Division) seeking a leave for her to file an application for her defence, though it’s now 3 months in jail with no hearing date fixed for hearing of her bail application.
”I am currently in Luzira Females Prison as a civil debtor on a matter that I was never afforded an opportunity to be heard at all and I have been advised by my lawyers which advice I verily believe to be true that a fair hearing is a constitutional right and that I have to be afforded the same before execution and detention in prison as a civil debtor,” she says
”Where I am at Luzira Females Prison, I am in bad health as I have severe back pain and I am malnourished due to lack of a balanced diet and the diet in prison is likely to ignite the other ailments that I have been trying to fight like allergies and the work we are ordered to do adds on the pain,” Coreen cries out.
She adds; ”The Respondent’s claim of Ugx 99,402.948/= arose from a loan that was disbursed to me which loan I paid back and the Respondent does not demand me any outstanding balance on the same and I am willing to defend myself against the claims made by the Respondent.”
Coreen says she has school going children who are young and she is their sole provider, another reason she stands on to seek a leave out of Luzira.
”Since I got a divorce from their father, court granted me custody and even on the date of my arrest, I was found taking my children to school, I have not seen them since then, they do not know my whereabouts.”
”In the circumstances, it is just and equitable that the Default Judgment in Civil Suit No. 1090 of 2022 be set aside, that execution of the decree be stayed, that I be released from civil prison, be granted unconditional leave to appear and defend the suit instituted by the respondent,” Coreen wrote to Court.
Our attempt to get a response from I&M bank proved futile after their official phone numbers went unanswered. Watch the space for the next update….
