Bank of Uganda (BoU)’s Executive Director Operations Dr. Charles Malinga Akol has been granted a Shs40m bail and released after appearing before the Anti-Corruption court today.
It is said Malinga was supposed to oversee the transfer of printed currency notes from France to Uganda, but he delegated the duty to Francis Kakeeto, a branch manager at BoU’s Mbale currency centre and his assistant Fred Wanyama. The two appeared before court last week and were remanded to Luzira over corruption and abuse of office.
This is the latest development in the BoU cash plane saga, where a plane that was chartered to exclusively fly in newly printed currency notes landed at Entebbe Airport on April 27, with excess cargo.
The plane had 25 instead of 20 palettes and as a result, rumour has been rife that BoU officials printed and brought in an extra Shs90 billion, genuine but unathorised cash for their own benefit.
Different government agencies have released contradicting statements with police spokesman Fred Enanga saying last week that they were investigating a matter of “extra cash” while government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said the line of investigation followed excess cargo belonging to several individuals and UN agencies.
MTN Chairman Charles Mbire has come out to say that he only had a jerrycan of adhesive glue for his boat on the plane and it was up to the freight company to explain how it got on. Another businessman Omar Mandela whom Ofwono mentioned as having had equipment for his Mandela Millers has been silent on the matter.
Parliament is also in the process of hearing from all agencies involved in the saga including Civil Aviation Authority and Uganda Revenue Authority. Already, CAA officials have told Parliament they were not aware of what was in the excess five boxes because of the classified nature of BoU cargo.