Cosase report: A probe marred by controversy

Kampala. Bugweri County MP Abdul Katuntu will hand over office of the chairperson of Parliament’s Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (Cosase) to Kawempe South MP Mubarak Munyagwa on Monday.

Mr Munyagwa had waited for the handover for nearly half a year since Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) president Amuriat Oboi designated him Cosase chairperson at the end of July last year.
It was argued then that the leadership of the committees could only change in November 2018, the mid-point of the term of Parliament, and when that time came, Mr Katuntu was in the middle of chairing the probe into the closure of commercial banks.

Speaker Rebecca Kadaga suggested that Mr Katuntu needed to first conclude the probe and table the report, which he finally did on Thursday. FDC held a contrary view but it was overruled.
Mr Katuntu, a member of FDC, got even more disconnected from the hierarchy at the party’s headquarters in Najjanankumbi as he was accused of clinging to the leadership of a committee. But this was only to add to the controversy that was already brewing and/or was to follow.
Before the probe kicked off, Budadiri West MP Nandala Mafabi, who is also the secretary general of FDC, accused Mr Katuntu of dilly-dallying about conducting the probe into the closure of commercial banks, an accusation Mr Katuntu referred to as an attempt to score points on the part of Mr Mafabi.

Mr Mafabi had made the original complaint in Parliament regarding what he called fraud in the closure and disposal of the seven commercial banks, calling for an audit into the matter.
Parliament, as a result, directed the Auditor General to conduct a special audit into the matter, and the Auditor General produced a report to that effect in August last year.
As the probe progressed, it became increasingly difficult to sift fact from fiction as information flew to all sides.
Ms Justine Bagyenda, BoU’s former executive director for commercial banks supervision, was the first to appeal to the authorities when she reported a case at the police claiming some online publications were running a propaganda campaign against her.

Always in the eye of the storm, matters did not improve for Ms Bagyenda as she suffered accusation after accusation before the probe, especially regarding her supervision role. The committee would eventually play video footage of scenes inside BoU in which Ms Bagyenda and her assistants were seen ferrying documents from the Central Bank.
As accusations and counter-accusations flew about, dfcu Bank threatened to sue Mr Rajiv Ruparelia, son of former Crane Bank’s majority shareholder Sudhir Ruparelia, over what they called sponsoring a propaganda campaign against them. dfcu Bank took over Crane Bank and a lot of questions about the transaction were raised during the probe.

Kasekende accused, cleared
And as the war of attrition which the probe became wore on, Dr Louis Kasekende, the BoU deputy governor, got in the line of fire. Multiple accusations were made against him, the most classic being what was tabled during a seating of the probe committee by Aruu County MP Odonga Otto and Kasilo County MP Elijah Okupa.

Committee chair Katuntu set up a three-man committee to investigate the allegations, and on Thursday wrote to Dr Kasekende communicating the findings. Mr Katuntu wrote that out of the 79 land titles that the two MPs claimed belonged to Dr Kasekende, only 13 were verified to be his, and that none of the 13 properties registered in Dr Kasekende’s name were part of the portfolio of any of the closed banks.
The other six banks were Greenland Bank, Global Trust Bank Uganda, National Bank of Commerce, the Cooperative Bank, International Credit Bank and Teefe Trust Bank.

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