By Andrew Irumba
There is growing tension, anxiety and untold fears at the DFCU bank after the leakage of vital bank Account information of the top boss’ starched US$40 million in one of the commercial Banks.
We can now reveal that the Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA),a government agency tasked with monitoring of money laundering in the country is in the final stages of instituting an investigation to ascertain how Juma Kisaame, the managing director of DFCU Bank had $ 40 million (Shs150B) in his Bank of Africa account especially, amidst controversies regarding the suspected ‘fraudulent’ purchase of the defunct Crane Bank Limited
Media reports have been awash with a leaked Bank of Africa bank statement belonging to Juma Kisaame. According to the bank statements printed from 1 March 31st July 2016, Juma Kisaame had in his Bank of Africa dollar account Number: 01087990270 a whopping USD 40 million. This statement was printed on 14th July 2018. TheSpy Uganda has established that the cash was deposited as at 1st March 2016. Though by the time of statement print, only $ 688 was reflecting as balance, majority having been cashed out.
The leak comes at the time when the Auditor General just released reports indicating that the process under which Dfcu ‘bought’ Crane Bank from BoU wasn’t transparent given that fact that Dfcu was the valuer turned purchaser of the same bank.
Though the FIA boss, Sydney Asubo couldn’t reveal further, inside sources at the Ministry of Finance parent body intimated that Kisaame would be summoned to have some ‘explanations’. “That is work already for us. We shall have him to explain how and where the funds came from. It is part of our mandate as FIA,” said a close source told this reporter.
The Auditor General revealed that DFCU negotiated with authorities at Bank of Uganda to buy Crane Bank Limited at Shs200 billion but as per the report, only Shs90 billion has so far been paid to the Central Bank, raising other serious audit and transparent queries.
We can now also state that the MDs woes are far from over, now with his bank transactions leakages after his attempts to resign in a stormy meeting held in South Africa last week blocked his resignation. The shareholders strongly rejected his resignation that he had tendered in.
Reports are rife that DFCU was lured by some top bosses at BoU to takeover Crane Bank, but now living in fear. The biggest question that is ringing now is whether or not DFCU bank is facing a liquidity crisis. This revelation came to the light when the bank’s board chair, Elly Karuhanga acknowledged, expressing worries about the banks’ stand. We have established that the bank is already phasing off some of its branches including the Entebbe Highway Abayita Ababiri branch.
As if that is not enough, scores of departure by top managers has been registered of late. The latest including the resignation of the banks Executive Director William Sekabembe. We have learnt he is set to join Kenya’s KCB. He was apparently the man that was set to replace the current managing director following a thorough grooming by the bank.
DFCU has never ceased to be out of the storm ever since they ‘controversially’ took over Crane Bank in January 2017. The intelligence authorities will now have the task of investigating how the alleged transaction between DFCU and BoU where about $3 million of the $8 million deposited by shareholders of Crane bank to BoU was instead shared between top individuals at DFCU and leading lawyers.
