A prominent city lawyer in 2017 orchestrated a robust plan to takeover the residence of property mogul Sudhir Ruparelia in Kololo, a high-end Kampala suburb.
This shrewd legal officer made his target at a time Bank of Uganda sold Crane Bank which belonged to the Ruparelia family.
At a time of its sale, the Central Bank claimed the financial institution which boosted of 46 branches across the country had nosedived into insolvency and therefore, efforts to recapitalize its operations would hit a dead wall.
But rather invite DFCU to takeover its assets and liabilities.
Sudhir would later contest the takeover in a commercial court. According to analysts, the litigation process involving Crane Bank, DFCU and Bank of Uganda would become one of its kind in the history of the country.
Bank of Uganda which had to file its defence in Court through external lawyers MMAKS advocates and AF Mpanga advocates.
But the affluent businessman Sudhir again failed another legal suit challenging the presentation of David Mpanga and Timothy Masembe as BoU’s lawyers.
One of the main reasons, Sudhir informed court that the duo at one time were his legal counsels and therefore it would be unfair for the defendant to hire these conflicted lawyers.
Court indeed ruled that Mpanga and Masembe should immediately be dropped from the case.
It must be noted that Bank of Uganda had paid close shs 1 billion to these lawyers for inexisting services.
Targeting Kololo Palatial Mansion
We learnt through our investigations that one of the lawyers hired by Bank of Uganda had decided to take on the case with a complete different motive other than trouncing Sudhir in court.
This shrewd lawyer known to have handled huge cases including defending the powerful opposition leader in the land also held powerful positions in the Mengo Administration.
The lawyer, we understand fell out with Sudhir.
Our investigation reveals that the money magnet terminated his services on learning his illicit actions.
“The plan was to take away his bank. Because these people knew very well the bank was earning the rich man quite some good money. Which they succeeded in executing,” said a source close to this lawyer but asked to remain unnamed.
In executing their deadly mission, this lawyer and his cohorts calculated that after selling the bank, it would be a great move in crippling Uganda’s richest man financially.
“There after concoct all sorts of criminal cases including money laundering, insider trading and many more,” a source said.
The concoctions would be crafted by this lawyer who claims to have known Sudhir to the marrow.
Scramble and Partition
In a meeting which was conducted at a certain residence in Kololo, an upscale suburb of Kampala, in attendance were BoU officials, their lawyers and close associates.
The aim of the meeting was to discuss Sudhir’s fate once he loses Crane Bank and then he is jailed.
To the utmost consternation, the BoU lawyers began portioning Sudhir’s properties.
“They began owning them,” a source said.
It’s at this point that the shrewd lawyer from Buganda told the meeting that, “very soon that mansion in Kololo will belong to me. I don’t want anything else apart from that house. When I sleep I dream about every night,” the lawyer is quoted to have said.
Disappointment
The dream has however, become a had nut. the lawyer’s hopes where shattered the moment Sudhir contested his involvement in the case.
The lawyer has since resorted to operate from underground by sponsoring and authoring very malicious stories about the Ruparelias.
“He is the main source of malicious information about Sudhir which has been doing rounds on social media and other online publications,” a source said.
Some of the stories include money laundering claims, murder charges, insider lending and also a new plan to attack Sudhir’s children, Sheena and Rajiv.
Setup
The latest gathered by this website indicates that Dfcu Bank and this lawyer are said to be planning to set up Sudhir Ruparelia’s son Rajiv Ruparelia for purposes aimed at gathering information that the can use against the Ruparelia Group which is a holding company for various companies such as Meera Investments, Crane Services Management (CSM) and former Crane Bank Limited (CBL) among others.
Rajiv is a director in many of Ruparelia’s companies some of which like Crane Services Management Limited and defunct CBL have legal battles with Dfcu Bank which controversially bought off CBL in January 2017.
In one of the leaked discussions between David Mpanga of AF Mpanga advocates, and other two people, the discussion is centred around a yet disclosed amount of money from Mpanga to allegedly fight bad/fake news campaign and also reportedly access Mr. Rajiv for a set up recordings that could be used against him.
The bank and the said law firm have lined up some news operatives to trick Rajiv into interviews so as to extract information that could be useful to Dfcu bank in case of pending court cases involving the two sides. according to the leaked discussion, the plan also involves recording Members of Parliament especially those on COSASE. Dfcu is the financier of the campaign while Mpanga is supposed to dig up old files and write articles involving the transaction he had with Sudhir while he still represented him.
