Centenary Bank wants Apac MP race winner arrested

Centenary Bank Uganda Ltd has invoked a case from 12 years ago to demand that the newly-elected MP for Apac Municipality, Mr Patrick Ocan, is arrested to answer charges of embezzlement that it brought against him in 2006.
Mr Ocan, who stood on the ticket of the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), won the election on Thursday with 6,597 votes.
The bank has written to the Chief Magistrate of Buganda Road Court over the matter. The letter dated July 23, 2018 and signed by the bank’s Investigations manager, Mr Henry Ssenkezi, a copy of which Sunday Monitor has seen, requires the court to reinstate the case against Mr Ocan.
Centenary Bank opened a case against Mr Ocan at the same court (Ref 510/2006) on November 23, 2006 at Buganda Road Court in Kampala, but the case was dismissed a month later since the accused could not be traced.
“We have been able to trace and identify the whereabouts of the suspect (Mr Ocan) and, therefore, request for the case to be reinstated,” the letter reads in part.
When contacted for a comment, Mr Ocan said he had not been contacted by the police over the matter.
“It is true I saw the letter which is simply politics propagated by my opponents and was aimed at failing me. The letter has been circulating all over the town but [the] police have never approached me or called me over the matter when the letter was authored,” Mr Ocan said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The case

Mr Ocan worked at Centenary Bank Nakivubo Branch in Kampala up to 2006 when he was interdicted over alleged infractions and causing financial loss of Shs25m.
In the letter of interdiction the then Centenary Rural Development Bank wrote to Mr Ocan on March 27, 2006, stating that “the treasury at Nakivubo was not balancing by Shs25 million”.
The letter to Mr Ocan continued: “During the preliminary interview you revealed that you had used the money to trade in fake (black) dollars.”
As the investigations continued, Mr Ocan was interdicted and put on half pay and eventually a case of embezzlement was brought against him, according to the documents we have seen.
Mr Ocan then went missing and a warrant of arrest him was issued against him by a magistrate at Buganda Road court on June 27, 2006.