By Andrew Irumba
Kampala: Three Bank of Uganda officials who were recently arrested and charged with several offenses in regard to excess cargo that was flown into Uganda aboard a chartered planed, have been forced out office, so as to allow smooth investigations into the scandal.
The suspects who are facing charges of abuse of office and corruption include; Francis Kakeeto, the Assistant Currency Director Bank of Uganda Mbale Branch, Fred Vito Wanyama, the Verification Officer and the Currency Director, Charles Malinga Akol. They were charged in the response to the currency that BoU was bringing into the country in April from Paris. BoU Governor Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile said the investigation was in relation to a consignment that the Central Bank received on April 27, 2019. “During the verification process, BOU staff reported an anomaly in the inventory of the expected consignment,” Mutebile stated this month. Latest details have shown that the problem was with the full charter plane that was supposed to carry only BoU cargo but carried five extra pallets that the central bank didn’t know their origin. BoU only knew 20 pallets that had 70 million pieces of 5,000 bill notes.
On Tuesday, the officials charged with abuse of office and corruption were granted bail up to August 2, 2019, when they will return to the anti-corruption court for the hearing of their case. Charity Mugumya, the BoU spokesperson, revealed that the trio is not in office. Another official at BoU revealed that in general, the institution follows public service rules that call for interdiction of the officials in question. The official added the three officials have not appeared at the office since Wednesday last week. An informer in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), said that ideally, the BoU suspects must leave office to pave way for smooth investigations. Mary Katarikawe, the BoU operations director, told reporters last week that the central bank wants to know what exactly was contained in the extra cargo and how it got into a full charter plane, putting the genuine BoU cargo at risk. Oberthur Fiduciare, the company contracted by Bank of Uganda to print Ugandan currency, has reportedly offered to compensate the central bank for the extra pallets that were irregularly loaded onto the chartered currency plane. This comes amidst the police revealing that the extra five pallets contained over Shs90Billion, claims the Bank of Uganda officials and the government publicist Ofwono Opondo have since refuted
