The State minister for Finance,(General Duties), Mr Henry Musasizi, makes a statement during the plenary session at Parliament in Kampala on November 28, 2024. PHOTO/DAVID LUBOWA
The police’s Directorate of Interpol and International Relations has written to its counterpart agencies in England and Japan to assist in establishing the identities of individuals [and companies] who received the coded wire transfers from the Bank of Uganda (BoU) for waste management activities in Uganda.
Sources close to the ongoing investigations into what appears to be an organised crime syndicate at BoU and Ministry of Finance told Monitor last evening that the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) tasked Interpol in Kampala to reach out to England’s Interpol in Manchester and Interpol in Tokyo, which is part of Japan’s Organised Crime Department of the Criminal Affairs Bureau.
Sources, however, indicated that both the English and Japanese Interpol agencies are yet to respond to the request from Kampala.
In this case, Interpol acts as a liaison between Ugandan law enforcement and the global Interpol network.
“CID headquarters is the one investigating the matter, but Interpol is used as a gateway to contact the two foreign countries to get information,” the source said, adding: “We are now waiting for a response.”
For Japan, knowledgeable sources further intimated that the matter has since “become a little complicated” after the local bank through which the spurious wire transfer was made rejected BoU’s request to freeze the transfer made in August pending the findings of the ongoing probe.
Sources indicated that the Tokyo-based partners of the syndicate in Kampala had presented “solid and sufficient” paperwork to prove that they undertook the said activities against which BoU effected payment of $6m (aboutt Shs22b).
Only the local bank in England had effected BoU’s request to freeze the $7m (approximately Shs25.8b), which now officials in Kampala are categorising as “recovered” money. It is suspected that the perpetrators of the scheme had, however, withdrawn around Shs400m.
Sources close to the probe further intimated that by yesterday a total of 17 officials from BoU and the Ministry of Finance had been interrogated by detectives from CID and the army’s Defence Intelligence and Security (DIS), formerly Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI).
The source indicated that investigators had seized laptops, mobile phones, and travel documents from some of the officials.
A BoU commissioned financial and systems audit undertaken by one of the renowned consultancy firms put the origins of the grand larceny scheme at the door steps of the Ministry of Finance’s Treasury department and Accountant General’s office, but with possible involvement of Central Bank staff with top level clearance.
According to sources, there have been numerous incidents of the cartel in the two high offices nibbling on money from the cash-strapped and debt-distressed treasury, including through local banks.
The CID/DIS probe, according to knowledgeable sources, has narrowed down the investigation as “inside job” in which some $13m (47.9b) was spirited away from state coffers. The perpetrators then created a cover-up story of hacking of the Central Bank’s IT infrastructure.
According to the investigators, the actors “created fictitious expenditures and transferred money from the Bank of Uganda, this was possible because the central bank is integrated with other banking systems globally”.
After creating the expenditure, multiple sources this newspaper spoke to over the past week said the money was sent to the Bank of Uganda through an asymmetric file on a secure channel, which had two keys; one was a public one known to the sender and recipient, and the other was known only to the recipient.
“They then used an intermediary bank to effect the international wire transfer which occurred between two banks and different countries,” the sources added.
It is at this point that someone using a private key decrypted the file created new keys for the file and compromised the system. Part of the money ($6m) was sent to an account domiciled in Japan, and the other batch ($7m) was sent to an account in England.
When the BoU officials learnt of the mess in September, they reportedly took the matter to the police and apprehended a staff who had been in Nairobi during that period. The staff member’s laptop was seized and handed over to a top audit firm. It emerged last evening that detectives were imaging the laptop to download log-in accounts to enable them establish whose credentials were used in the heist.
Frozen account
Sources indicated that the Tokyo-based partners of the syndicate in Kampala had presented “solid and sufficient” paperwork to prove that they undertook the said activities against which BoU effected payment of $6m (approximately Shs22b). Only the local bank in England had effected BoU’s request to freeze the $7m (approximately Shs25.8b), which now officials in Kampala are categorising as “recovered” money.
