The Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) has today, Wednesday started to quiz senior Bank of Uganda officials about the controversial take over of Crane Bank and six other commercial banks.
According to the committee chairman, Bugweri MP Abdul Katuntu, the probe will be guided by the Auditor General report which noted that Bank of Uganda not only abused procedure in selling Crane Bank to DFCU but also spent a lot of money on the takeover that was not quantified.
Besides Crane Bank, the committee will also investigate how Teefe Bank, International Credit Bank Ltd, Greenland Bank, The Co-operative Bank, National Bank of Commerce and Global Trust Bank also went into receivership.
Kantutu confirmed that the committee will summon senior BoU officials such as Governor Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile, Louis Kasekende his deputy, the former director-in-charge of Supervision, Justine Bagyenda among others.
The committee will among others seek to find out how BoU officials withdrew more than Shs478.8billion from an unidentified account in the bank to apparently offer liquidity support to Crane Bank Limited whose financial position was falling below the required 50 per cent threshold.
This is addition to other colossal sums that were paid to audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (Shs1.3billion)KPMG (shs731m), city law firm, MMAKs which acted as BoU’s external lawyers before being kicked off the case was paid Shs3.9bn for legal service plus 5% commissions from money recovered from Crane Bank shareholders among others.