Tycoon Sudhir Ruparelia who last week again floored Bank of Uganda in Court, has tabled a bill of UGX200billion for all the costs.
Last week, Supreme Court ordered BoU to directly pay costs at all Court levels and ordered that the Bank be reverted to Sudhir and the stakeholders, a ruling that effectively settled a long-standing legal battle between Sudhir and the bank regulator, dating back to 2017 when the bank was dubiously sold to Dfcu bank.
In a brief interview with our investigative reporter, Sudhir reacted to the victory thus, “I told you from the beginning that Bank of Uganda stole my bank. I thank the judiciary for not shielding such dubious games,” he adds, “They have to pay costs of suit right from the Commercial Bank to the Supreme Court.”
Asked how the entire saga has affected him, Sudhir revealed, “I made heavy loses because of Bank of Uganda, my reputation as a business man… I have never failed any business, BoU killed my carrier when they said I had failed my own business – Crane Bank. That has a bearing especially with your business partners.”
On the question of why such a heavy bill of UGX200Billion, Sudhir answered, ”They disturbed me mentally and physically, how can that be equated in terms of money?
Meanwhile, we’ve learnt that the penalties include legal fees from lower courts up to Supreme Court plus lawyers’ costs.
Remember that all these stem from June 30, 2017, when Crane Bank Limited (in Receivership) took Mr. Sudhir Ruparelia and his Meera Investments Ltd to court for causing financial loss amounting to UGX 397 billion to Crane Bank in fraudulent transactions and land title transfers.
Crane Bank (in receivership) in its Civil Suit No. 493 of 2017 sought High Court to compel Mr. Ruparelia to pay back the US$80,000,000, US$9,270,172.00, US $ 3,560,000.00, US$990,000.00 and UGX 52,083,995.00 as compensation for breach of fiduciary duty.
While Hon. Justice Wangutusi dismissed the UGX 397 billion case against Mr. Ruperalia on a technicality, alleging that Crane Bank (in Receivership) lost its powers to “sue” and to “be sued”, thus rendering its suit a nullity, Crane Bank (in Receivership) maintaining that receivership is a management situation, and hence no legal change as to the capacity of a company to sue and be sued which ruling BoU disagreed with and instead kept on appealing till the last court losing at all levels to the tycoon.
