By Hanning Mbabazi
The managing director Bank of Baroda, Mr Ashwini Kumar on 19th June faced Justice Catherine Bamugemereire’s land probe committee to explain the selling of Ms Barbara Atukunda Sseruwu’s matrimonial home in Nalusuga near Gayaza, Wakiso district, to a dead person.
The commission squeezed the Director of Bank of Baroda to explain how the bank gave a Shs15m loan to a dead man, who received the money and how much land the bank sold to recover their money. However, the managing director failed to show on which account the loan was deposited. “My lord, the documents on record show that Inter-Sports Uganda Limited where Seruwu was a director took the facility. He could have applied for the loan before he died,” Mr Kumal said.
The alleged house was bought by Charles Sserunkuma, who later sold it to Mr Michael Mawanda, the Member of Parliament for Igara East. Ms Sseruwu argued that her late husband could not have borrowed money from the bank on September 14, 1994, because he died on August 28, 1994. The deputy lead counsel, Mr John Bosco Suuza, insisted that the mortgage deed against which the late allegedly obtained the loan was questionable because it was signed by a dead man or his ghost. Ms Sseruwu also accused the bank of underselling her property at Shs5m yet it had been valued at Shs51m. However, Mr Kumar who joined the bank in 2017, reasoned that the sale was at a public auction and wondered why Ms Sseruwu did not take the bank to court then. Sseruwu wants the Commission to compel the Bank to return her house because she is not convinced with how her late husband borrowed the money when he was already dead. Mawanda, who allegedly auctioned the land, is set to appear before the land probe to explain how he sold the land to Sserunkuma and later bought it back.
