Tycoon Karim Hirji is entangled in a property row with the children of his late wife Ziba Nanyonga, who was popularly known as Charm.
The children have petitioned Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga alleging that Attorney General William Byaruhanga and lawyer Masembe Kanyerezi of MMAKS Advocates colluded with Karim Hirji to fraudulently grab properties that belonged to their late mother hence denying them inheritance.
Ziba succumbed to cancer at the Cromwell Hospital in London in February 2004. Karim named the iconic building Charm Towers in Kampala’s central business district after her when he acquired it. The building used to house the headquarters of the defunct Uganda Commercial Bank.
The children, Linda Birungi, Anita Birungi and Ronnie Birungi, state that at the time of getting married to Karim Hirji, their mother already had older children who were left with nothing upon her death thanks to a “fraudulent will” and only the three children she sired with Karim benefitted from her demise.
“The attorney general is behind this fraud, how could they change her will just a week before her death. We are asking the speaker to fight for us so that we get what belongs to us,” the children said in their petition to Kadaga.
The estate in dispute includes three properties in London, a life insurance policy worth 3M pounds, two houses in Bugolobi, two properties in Kololo, two shopping arcades in Kampala, two properties on Mawanda Road and others in Nansana and Gayaza.
They are further also accused of taking all deposits estimated at $10m on Ziba Hirji’s current and fixed deposit bank accounts in Barclays Bank now Absa Bank, ICBC Bank in UK and the defunct Imperial Investment Bank that belonged to Hirji and Allied Bank. They want Kadaga to compel Bank of Uganda to investigate the money on these bank accounts.
Byaruhanga is alleged to have travelled to London during Charm’s hospitalisation and obtained her signature which they used to sell off her properties in London and grab deposits on her London bank accounts.
“Parliament should help investigate our mum’s property that was transferred five days to her death. Mum was in coma and couldn’t understand what was happening. She had started taking strong medicine that impaired her judgement four months before her death,” the children say.
The children have filed a case in the Family Division of the High Court but they say it has not been very helpful so they want Parliament to intervene.
“We even went to the Bamugemereire Commision (on land) but we didn’t get much help,” the children say.