Bank of Uganda Governor Tumusime Mutebile and his Deputy Louis Kasekende have been contradicting each other over the performance and eventual fraudulent sale of Crane Bank to DFCU in 2017.
Our reporter has landed on key informative that exposes the divisions in the Central Bank over how it grossly abused its power and authority in the regulation of local banks and how illegal transactions took place before the disposal of Crane Bank assets and liabilities was done.
In December 2016, while speaking at the Annual Bankers Dinner in Kampala, Governor Tumusiime Mutebile said that Crane Bank was too big to fall. That was after the Central Bank had taken over the operations of Crane Bank to prevent it from collapse and injected 200 billion shillings to keep it afloat. Mutebile stated that, “in October 2016, Crane Bank, one of the largest banks in the market, was taken over by the BOU and placed under statutory management because its huge burden of nonperforming loans placed depositors funds at risk. Crane Bank was resolved in January 2017 with the transfer of the bulk of its assets and liabilities to DFCU bank”. The resolution however is being contested by Crane Bank shareholders who argue that they were not consulted on the process of handing over their bank to another bank, DFCU.
The Deputy Governor of BOU Louis Kasekende has also made contradictory statements which continues to cast doubt among the general public on the scandal involving the flimsy Crane Bank sale. Speaking at the 20 year Anniversary Dinner for Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) on 6 April 2018 at Serena Hotel Kampala, Kasekende said that, ” BOU did not sell Crane Bank.” He adds that, “Because no one would have bought a bank with a negative net-worth of this magnitude.”
He concludes that, “DFCU assumed most of the liabilities of Crane Bank, including all of its deposits, and acquired assets of equivalent value. The remaining assets and liabilities not transferred to DFCU have been put into the liquidation process.”
At the same dinner, Kasekende contradicted the official Bank of Uganda position that claims that Crane Bank failed because of its huge fraction of Non-Performing Loans (NPL). He asserts that Crane Bank’s collapse was “due to mismanagement by its board and extensive insider lending” and not due to struggles in the Uganda economy as stated in the BOU Annual Supervision Report.
He claims that Crane Bank had a negative networth of approximately 260 billion shillings rendering it insolvent. “I also want to point out that, despite the weakness of the economy in 2016, all of the commercial banks in Uganda with the exception of Crane Bank, remained solvent and was able to comply fully with the statutory capital adequacy ratios. The only bank which suffered financial distress and became insolvent was Crane Bank.” Kasekende revealed.
It is still however contestable how BOU reached a liquidation process of a bank whose operations it was still managing and which had over the years been ranked as the best performing local bank up to the time it was declared insolvent. This cast doubt on the supervisory arm of the Central Bank which was deemed as incompetent.
The whole process of transferring Crane Bank and its assets and liabilities was done in a very filmsy, secret and fraudulent manner and it is the basis on which Crane Bank shareholders instituted a civil case in the Commercial court Division of the High Court of Uganda disputing the transaction since audit reports by external auditors into Crane Bank assets and liabilities had declared it as one of the best performing local banks.
It appears the Bank of Uganda Governor and his Deputy had used underhand methods to fail Crane Bank from recovering its non performing loans since most of those were acquired by businessmen and politicians in the government of Uganda.
