By Andrew M. Mwenda
From the beginning I smelt a rat in the way Bank of Uganda handled the matters of Crane Bank. Now the cat is out of the bag. Officials at BoU working through Mrs. Edith Gasana Kutesa, the wife of our foreign affairs ministry, Sam Kutesa, began discussing the sale of Crane Bank to a “Chinese Investor” long before the central bank asked Sudhir Ruparelia to recapitalize the bank.
Now it is obvious that BoU was sharing information about the internal affairs of Crane Bank with third parties long before it informed bank management. It is also clear to me now, that BoU stopped Crane Bank from issuing new loans, overdrafts, bid bonds, performance guarantees, letters of credit etc i.e. froze the bank from doing business in a deliberate strategy to make it fail.
The communication between BoU and this Chinese “investor” happened in May 2016. The demand by BoU on Sudhir Ruparelia to recapitalize Crane Bank happened on July 1, 2016. Therefore BoU had decided to sell the bank even before asking Sudhir to recapitalize it. If Uganda tolerates this fraud, it will not be new. It will only add to the long list of fraudulent activities the public have come to expect from the state.
The elimination of crane Bank from the market has left many Ugandans stranded without access to credit. Our banking sector is dominated by big multinational banks who have little interest in lending our people. They are only interested in holding huge accounts of their fellow multi national corporations and then buying government paper to make money. Worse than that, they have draconian rules on borrowing that make banks during the colonial period look less racist.
Uganda’s march towards the complete, total and absolute control of our economy by foreign forces has now reached it’s apogee. What is sad is that many Ugandan elites do not see how their misery is closely tied to foreign control of our economy.
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