How businessman landed into trouble over tenant’s property

City businessman Moses Kalungi was on Thursday arrested over allegations of theft of his tenant’s property, illegal confinement of a police officer and threatening violence.

Mr Kalungi is said to have broken into one of his tenants’ sports betting shop located on Kalungi Plaza and removed property for failing to pay rent arrears during the coronavirus lockdown.

The spokesman of the Criminal Investigations Directorate, Mr Charles Twine, said Mr Kalungi has a sanctioned charge of theft of his tenant’s property and others still pending.

“His actions have warranted us to first take him for medical examination to establish whether he is sane or not. If his mental health is normal, then we shall take him to court on the sanctioned charges,” Mr Twine said.

Trouble started when Mr Patrick Smuts, the owner of the Sports Betting shop, failed to pay $15,000 (more than Shs55 million) for rent during the lockdown period.

It is alleged that Mr Kalungi and his aide opened the shop and impounded more than 100 television sets, air conditioning equipment and other items, which they put in the landlord’s store.

“On May 6, Mr Smuts took some money to Mr Kalungi at his home, but he rejected it, saying he wanted full payment. He even chased Mr Smuts out of his home with a gun,” Mr Twine said.

Mr Smuts went to CID headquarters where he accepted to pay the full amount and handed it over to police detectives to pass it over to his landlord.
After handing over the money to the police, Mr Smuts went to pick his items from Mr Kalungi’s stores but the TV sets were missing.

“They contacted Mr Kalungi,ho told them to go to his home to pick the rest. At his home, they found only 32 TV sets. Mr Kalungi told his aide to seize the TV sets again and ordered the tenant to get out of his home before he put our detective at gunpoint and confined him until his money was delivered from CID headquarters,” he said.

Following investigations, police also found out that Mr Kalungi had evicted the tenant without a court order and that his actions of depriving the tenant of his property were criminal.
Mr Kalungi was later summoned to record a statement, but he did not turn up.

“The case was processed without his statement and later sanctioned. We have been trying to arrest him in vain because he was moving with a group of people to protect him,” he said.

We later managed to arrest him and in the process, he committed other offences of threatening the detectives, which we are now investigating,” he added.

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