By Spy Uganda
In what looks to be defying his own lawyers of Muwema & Co. Advocates by allowing them to speak for him, business tycoon Patrick Bitature has decided to speak for himself, in which he puts emphasis on the ‘TRUTH’ and nothing but the ‘Truth’ about the whole saga surrounding his loan with Vantage.
In his latest statement dated May, 20th, Bitature, has owned up to his loan obligations but said he was let down by two unexpected circumstances, where he had put his hopes to clear up the Vantage loan;
1-Wrong speculation: Although sounding diplomatic, Bitature actually blames Government for letting him invest in the oil and gas sector based on Government’s activity calendar on the Final Investment Decision (FID) agreements with other stakeholders in the Hoima oil projects, whose date the Government kept on extending, thereby giving him false calculations as to when he would start getting back dividends on his investments and then start repaying Vantage loan.
Business tycoons all over the world sometimes speculate or anticipate, or even bet on multibillion ventures, whereby, if it goes as anticipated, a man like Bitature can wake up one morning and he’s USD30m richer than he slept the previous night! So the magic is, whether you GUESSED IT RIGHT the previous night!.
”Following the signing of the Mezzanine facility in 2014, the first repayment was overdue in 2017. However unforeseen challenges like the unprecedented delay of the Final Investment Decision (FID) on the oil and gas projects and Vantage’s requirement to us to improve the Sky Hotel’s fire and safety features to internationally bench-marked standards hindered our envisaged projects,” says Bitature in a statement dated 30th May 2022.
2- Bitature used part of the money to complete Skyz Hotel in anticipation that the hotel would break even soonest. Unfortunately, even before he could settle down to do business at the hotel, COVID-19 set in breaking all his dreams.
When you look at Bitature’s hotel, it doesn’t target the local customer, it mainly targets big wallet spenders, who are foreigners. But his clientele was blocked from stepping into the country by COVID-19 restrictions globally and regionally. However, Vantage didn’t stop counting its profits!
3- In his statement, he mentions that later on, the Hotel was required to inject in billions of money into globally accepted standardized fire safety systems. This wasn’t also anticipated. So these among others are the reasons the man from Buhweju could have failed him from meeting his loan obligations.
Whereas some speculators had started involving Dr Sudhir Ruparelia in the mele, Bitature’s own statement now exonerates the city tycoon. Actually, by the time Sudhir’s Crane Bank gave a loan to Bitature, he was saving his buildings from being taken by another bank. Sudhir came in and saved the situation by giving him a loan and he cleared the bank and then paid Crane Bank later.
Meanwhile, Bitature’s statement comes days after May 24th, 2022 ruling in which High Court Judge Stephen Mubiru condemned Bitature’s senior Lawyer Fred Muwema for misleading his client when he failed to give him proper legal advice.
The judge then ordered Muwema to pay all the legal costs to the respondents (Vantage) rather than his client (Bitature).
”Costs will be ordered against counsel personally where counsel has acted improperly, unreasonably, or negligently, thereby causing the other party to incur unnecessary costs, in all the circumstances
it is just to make such an order,” ruled Stephen Mubiru.
