By Siraje Lubwama
After spending one year and nine months behind the bars in Dubai and Sweden, embattled local businessman and socialite Sulaiman Kabangala alias SK Mbuga returned to Uganda last Saturday, and said he is going to face off with Ugandan mafia who led to his arrest and prosecution in Sweden.
Talking to this reporter on Monday from his Konge-Buziga residence, Mbuga, who was set free by a Swedish court on September 29, 2019, alleged that the mafias here, some of them using government positions, were issuing wild allegations and some planted cooked up stories on social media with intent to grab his properties and money.
“While in court in Sweden a state prosecutor there named Ugandans, some of them using their positions in government, who claimed I had stolen money amounting to Swedish Kronor 53 million (about 23 billion) from a one Sten Heinsoo, which allegation had no backing,” Mbuga said joyfully.
“Ironically, when court pressed the prosecutor to produce the so-called complainant [Heinsoo] he was pulled out of jail and confessed to court that he did not only not know me, but he had never dealt with me,” Mbuga, who was dressed on army camouflage attire, added.
Narrating his ordeal, Mbuga said that “On January 28, as I was going to inspect my company in Sweden, I was arrested from Dubai where police alleged that I was on an international arrest warrant and was wanted in Sweden.”
“The police made me record a statement and detained me for one year and one month without producing me to court until I wrote to the parliamentary Speaker Rebbeca Aritwala Kadaga, through Uganda’s Ambassador to Denmark Zake Kibedi. The former responded by sending me Hon. Okello Oryem; that when I was transferred to Sweden in an illegal way because they drove me by road through Denmark without my passport being stamped,” narrated Mbuga.
He said while in Dubai cells and later Sweden, he studied basic law using the libraries there and some law text books he bought. He revealed that he also used the offer of a free government legal representative offered to him by the Swedish government and hired a private lawyer.
“Because of the basic law knowledge I had gained, I put the Swedish prosecutor on task, examining him on various issues which were not known to him, because the Dubai file I had compiled was not brought to Sweden. But the prosecutor wanted to create a file with amended charges which I vehemently objected to and my lawyer took on from here, prompting the judge to dismiss the charge with costs, which I estimate to be USD20 million [about Shs74 billion] with interests,” boasted Mbuga.
Commenting about alleged charges against his wife Angella Vivienne Birungi, 33, Mbuga said he is going to fight those other trumped cases levied against her. He claimed some police officers in Uganda connived with mafias to extradite her to Sweden on trumped up charges without going through normal diplomatic procedures yet she possesses duo citizenship, a move he said was blocked through Swedish court and court in Uganda.
“I had got scanty information from my lawyer Neo Barshtede that the so-called complainant had used details of my wife to fake a case against me and also this same so-called complainant had lied to the prosecutor that the US 800,000 on my Swedish account should be frozen, an application the trial judge refused to honour,” added Mbuga.
He said he is going to start with completing his projects here beginning with completing a community hospital he had embarked on in Lukuli parish, Makindye division, before he got arrested.
