By Ronaldo Kalangi
Mr.Lawrence Malong Yor, the youthful South Sudanese ‘tycoon’ who recently flossed about his wealth on social media was Thursday afternoon remanded to Luzira Prison on charges of fraud and obtaining money by false pretense.
The ‘tycoon’ was produced at Buganda Road court and read charges by Magistrate Ms Joan Acaa . Malong was charged jointly with a broker of Congolese nationality, Mr Mike Okitalunyi Lota and Gavana Thaddeus Zikusooka aka James Byaruhanga who are all his business associates. After reading for them charges of obtaining money by false pretense, they all took the plea of not guilty.
Later, Ms Acaa remanded the suspects until April 4, 2019, to await a mention of their case after their lawyer Fred Erisata asked the court for a shorter adjournment to enable the suspects apply for bail.
State alleges that the trio, between February 2017 and December 2018 at different places in capital Kampala obtained $1.9 million from one Wegnew Desire that they were going to sell to him gold which they never produced up to now.
Prosecution said the three remanded, approached the complainant and lured him that they were able to supply him gold at $23,000 per kg in a shortest period of time as they had been in that business for so long.
But when the complainant paid them money for the same, they again tricked him that the shipment was not possible for small amounts.
They asked him for more money such that they can ship five kilograms but when he went to Dubai before they could deliver anything they called him back to Uganda in order to buy more than 100kgs of gold that they had obtained.
After signing all the paper work, Mr Wegnew allegedly paid the money they wanted but up to now they have never supplied him the gold.
According to the documents presented in court, that Spy Uganda has seen, Mr Malong was a license holder for gold trade while Mr Lota was a gold dealer.
It’s said that Mr Wegnew got several loans in order to raise the money they needed so that he could be supplied with gold.
This is not the first time Mr Malong, is arrested over gold scams. Last year he was arrested by Internal Security Organization (ISO) on similar allegations of gold scam dealings.
