By Spy Uganda
Kampala: “We believe you would agree that borrowers such as Simba, and more recently Ham Enterprises, who trade in the procurement and avoidance of debt obligations, present a major risk to Uganda’s financial sector. The publicity around such defaults seems to suggest the entrenchment of a culture (and ease) of evasion of loan obligations,” this is part of a statement Vantage Capital has issued to Bank of Uganda clarifying on its debt battle with Simba Group owned by Patrick Bitature.
Simba Properties Investment Company Limited (SPIC) (as borrower) and Patrick Bitature (as guarantor and promotor) borrowed US$10,000,000 (Loan) from Vantage to fund the completion of Simba’s Skyz Hotel in 2014 which loan matured and fell due for repayment in December 2019. Since then, Bitature has been in battles with Vantage Capital.
The financial company notes that Bitature and the Simba Group granted security for the above-mentioned loan in the form of charges over their shares and legal mortgages were registered over certain properties owned by them (Security).
When attempted to put Simba properties on auction, matters escalated to court and out of this, Bank of Uganda swung into action and tasked Vantage to first give clarification about this saga to central bank which is the regulator of the financial sector.
In a response inked by Vantage, requested Central Bank to conduct a wider audit and tighten the rules for borrowers from foreign lenders.
”A lot of this (foreign) lending may be outside the banking sector but relating to securities that are shared with the banks. In those cases you may want to consider running a wider sensitivity analysis on the sector,” Vantage inked adding;
“We believe you would agree that borrowers such as Simba, and more recently Ham Enterprises, who trade in the procurement and avoidance of debt obligations, present a major risk to Uganda’s financial sector. The publicity around such defaults seems to suggest the entrenchment of a culture (and ease) of evasion of loan obligations.”
It is worth noting that Hamis Kiggundu is in battle with Diamond Trust Bank (Uganda) and Diamond Trust Bank (Kenya) over same loan scandals.
The banks argued that Kiggundu received a credit facility totaling over shs41b a few years ago and he still owes them about shs39b. In turn, Kiggundu accused the banks of fraudulently siphoning over shs200b from his accounts without his knowledge and consent over the past 10 years.
