By Our Reporters
A few days ago, a group of young corporate ladies spontaneously went into party mood at a top city hangout. Seemingly in their 30s, the young ladies, about 10 of them, got the exciting news that all wasn’t well at Standard Chartered Bank having read the two stories reported on this news website showing there was a problem at Standard Chartered which simply is one of the biggest banks operating in Kampala. One of our sources was in the vicinity and closely eavesdropped what was being said as the young ladies partied while reflecting on the two stories showing how a whistle blower had reported to Stan Chart CEO Albert Saltson and BoU Governor Emmanuel Mutebile implicating some officials for engaging in some unethical practices. “From what they kept saying as they celebrated it appears these young ladies were happy that this information had finally reached the very top,” estimates our dependable source who was at the hang out where the girls were having their fan from. It was very clear to him that some of the girls had worked at Orient Bank before being fired after something awry went wrong regarding one of the bank accounts belonging to Mr. Swizzin Twesige who works as one of the Relationship Managers (RMs) at Standard Chartered Bank. In fact Mr. Twesige is among those referred to in our earlier two stories that the jubilant girls kept referring to. Some of the girls still work at Orient and were uncomfortable with the manner in which the management sternly expelled their workmates after Shs75m was fraudulently withdrawn from Mr. Twesige’s account. The problematic withdrawal, that would cost the otherwise very excellent bank another Shs75m, occurred at the Kololo branch. In the end, some of the girls who (as tellers) worked on the transaction lost their jobs because within 5 minutes after his look-alike withdrew the money, Mr. Twesigye contacted the bank raising a red flag that some unauthorized transaction had occurred on his account. Apparently he got a text message on his phone alerting him of the transaction; this is commonly done by banks to keep their customers in the know even in circumstances where the valid owner of the account is the one who has just withdrawn the money.
HOW IT HAPPENED;
From what our source gathered at the hang out where the girls celebrated from and he overheard them re-count the events of that fateful day, we have been able to piece up the following story: The day was 14th September 2015 when a gentleman walked into the banking hall. After filling in the withdraw slip, the customer went straight to the counter and the first teller he approached didn’t have money in her till. She signaled him to move to the next teller but this was after verifying the consistencies and similarities in the signature and the ID. The gentleman carried what was taken to be the one for the rightful account owner’s ID. The only major mistake the girls at the ka-drink up seemed to accept and own up to was the fact that they omitted photocopying the identity card yet this is a procedural requirement especially for a customer withdrawing such a huge sum. Besides the two girls (one who verified paper work and the other who paid out the cash), there was a supervisor who was also involved in the transaction. The supervisor looked through the paper work and flagged off the withdraw. Thus it were these three that ultimately paid the price when things fell apart-and it turned out the account owner was disowning the gentleman who took the money. Strangely, from what the girls chatted, on realizing something was amiss, Swizzin Twesige (who had never used Kololo branch for any Orient bank on the counter transaction) rang a friend in the Orient bank Kawempe branch and not Kololo. He perhaps didn’t have the number for the Kololo branch and the Kawempe friendship brought proximity. It was the Kawempe guy who rang Kololo saying “hey guys you have dealt with a wrong person on the Shs75m you have just paid out.” There was panic, emails were written alerting the headquarters and the girls subsequently appeared before a disciplinary committee where Mr. Twesige too appeared to make his case. The girls were subsequently asked to quit their jobs and, at their drink up, they sounded grateful Orient bank at least never demanded that they repay the Shs75m. They perhaps couldn’t even afford. Their expulsion (they kept insisting they are innocent) prompted them to report the matter to Jinja road police station and the detectives had to scrutinize the phone calls that were made between the customer and the Kawempe friend. In the end, the customer’s acquaintance was briefly detained after technology located him to have been somewhere at Makerere moments after the fraud occurred at the Kololo branch. In the end, as can be expected, a lot of evidence was being required by the police detectives and the girls gave up their complaint at Jinja road police station and the guys that had been arrested had to be released for the absence of the complainant. The girls had also run out of money that the detectives kept demanding each time a step was to be taken. So, according to our source, during the drink up, the girls unanimously declared happiness that the wealthy customer whose account transaction cost them jobs was also finally in some mess following the whistle blower petition to both Mutebile and Saltson.
KWAGALANA BLACKLISTED;
In a related development, some of the traders belonging to Kwagalana group have, following our story exposing the discrepancies at Standard Chartered Bank, started to be shunned by some banks. We can reliably reveal that, having learnt from our story how shady some of these Kwagalana guys can be sometimes, the banks are beginning to turn their back on them urging their loans officers to be very cautious when entertaining loan applications from such guys. The whistle blower petition detailing their shamness has dully been received by Standard Bank CEO Albert Saltson and Governor Mutebile.
FLASHBACK;
One of our exclusive stories that caused the Orient girls to be excited read as follows (and we published it on 11th April titled “Whistle Blower Exposes Rot @ Standard Bank”): In a two page dossier, a whistle blower exposes the rot at Standard Chartered Bank. Addressed to Albert Saltson the CEO of Standard Chartered (one of the biggest banks in the industry), the dossier is dated 23rd March 2018 and it shows areas in which middle level managers are conniving to rip off the bank that employs them. The blind copy of the petition is also shared with BoU the regulator and the authors conclude that the international banking institution, that has always kept a good image, “is deeply exposed to the risk if the situation isn’t addressed.” We couldn’t readily establish what steps the BoU and Standard Chartered Bank CEO were taking on getting the petition. We were unable to have this established because the number for Cynthia Mpanga, the one charged with speaking for the bank, was unavailable each time we called on it. But we spoke to Mr. Twesige Swizzin, one of the many Relatioship Managers the whistle blower says have taken advantage of the lapses in the bank’s systems to become outrageously very rich. Whereas he earns Shs7m per month, the whistle blower claims Twesige owns too much property for his salary. He owns a posh house in Katooke village near Kawempe (valued at over Shs200m) and he is also associated with very successful money lending businesses in town. Sources named some of the companies under whose names he operates money lending targeting mostly loan applications that fail to succeed borrowing from Standard Chartered bank. There are mostly SME traders from Kikubo and Nabugabo. It’s said one of his brother Job, who sometime back controversially returned to Uganda after a controversial stint serving in the US army, is the one who runs these money lending companies with Twesige keeping in the background. He is said to own several luxury cars including a brand new land cruiser in the UBB series. They others include a Navara, a Suzuki Escuardo and a Harrier which his brother crushed sometime back while returning from night partying. Wealthy Twesige, in his early 40s, also owns a supermarket and a multi-billion residence in Hoima Itara village. The supermarket is also in Hoima. He also has a dealership of Albertine Water and is also into cosmetics importation into Uganda from South Africa. A young freshly graduated is said to be the one overseeing the cosmetics distribution network. He is very outgoing and generous to campus students for whom he likes buying drinks at happening places like Club Amnesia, Guvnor and Sheraton’s Equator Bar. He also maintains expensive rented homes for his children in places like Naalya, Kisaasi and Bugolobi. The whistle blower gives him as an example of guys whose employment in the Standard Chartered Bank’s credit/loans department has made them very rich in such a short time. He implores the CEO to become interested and inquire into Twesige and other RMs’ wealth. The whistle blower also refers to the supervisors who are letting down the bank including a one Henry Sebaana and another guy called Patrick Ishanga. The two supervisors are said to have slept on the job as those they are supposed to supervise are amassing wealth at the expense of their employer. The whistle blower says there is a lot of “connivance between relationship managers at the head office, Kikuubo branch and the traders.”
TWESIGE REACTS;
Having failed to get Cynthia Mpanga, we rang Twesige who admitted being rich but denied any wrong doing. He said he believes there are people who are envious of his wealth and have now resorted to using the media to antagonize him. “My track record is very clear and there is nothing at all on my employment file with the bank. I have lived a very clean life professionally in the last 10 years I have worked [started out at Barclays and Eco bank before Standard Chartered wooed him]. I have never received a warning letter but I know someone is using the media to fight a wrong battle. Let them write because I’m not the first one to be written about and in any case I’m too small to make news. They wrote about Kasese killings; didn’t it stop? Museveni is written about every day but has it ever killed him?” wealthy Twesige said insisting that even when the whistle blower was accusing him personally, the right person to comprehensively speak to this news website is Cynthia Mpanga who we failed to get.
OTHER WHISTLE BLOWER POINTS;
The whistle blower raises a number of areas that the CEO should investigate into to save the bank against rampaging employees who have served long enough and know how to beat the system. It’s understood that banks like Stanbic have been trying to lure some of the RMs with bigger offers “but they have refused to switch because the laxity at Standard Chartered earns them much more.” The whistle blower claims that some of the RMs ask for as much as 10% of the loan money before a borrower’s loan application can be approved. The victims are mostly SME traders from down town who always want quick money without having to go through rigorous scrutiny preceding the loan approval. The whistle blower implies that its such guys that the sharp RMs take advantage of luring them to their own money lending firms which in most cases are brief cases businesses that aren’t even properly registered. The RM will just ring a relative of his or hers directing them that “please arrange Shs30m for so and so.” The whistle blower claims that such RMs no longer rely on the salary but hang in there in order to use the bank merely for address and liaison purposes. Its borrowers seeking bigger monies that are squeezed to part with 10% of the loan sum in order to secure the necessary approval. “They [RMs] give the impression that their bosses have to be bribed to have them process their loans yet most of the money ends up in their pockets,” the whistle blower writes. “Further they go ahead of ask for further tips once the approval is done.” The whistle blower urges the CEO to keenly probe some guys in the retail banking section. That there is a network of RMs who report to a certain big man who sits inside the Standard Chartered building on Speke Road. As if s/he has ever been a victim himself, the whistle blower advises the CEO to quietly go and ask borrowers in Kikubo who will confirm that “every loan that the RMs present for approval must come with a bribe.” The whistle blower adds that; “Those that don’t present some money are usually delayed and sometimes denied/not approved or frustrated.” The whistle blower adds that “many of them [RMs] have built large capital base that they run several mobile lending businesses.” That some of them make it appear as if the money lending firm is a family business and for them are merely compassionate middlemen linking the frustrated borrower to a quick solution. “Yet in actual sense they are the money lenders. This makes them rob the bank of potential clients and profitability.” The whistle blower rants on: “Through this they have acquired a lot of wealth. They run several bank accounts with huge sums of money. Their lifestyles bring a lot of suspicion. Eco bank Uganda and Barclays are their personal bankers where they keep their money. Some of the accounts are also run in the names of their children.” The whistle blower, who appears to know much more, adds thus; “While fulfilling requirements for approval of loans especially when there are buy-offs of loans from other banks, bank statements are forged from Nasser and Nkrumah road. Your RMs have learn the art of presenting fake bank statements. This presents false information to the bank as most of the buy off loans from other banks are usually brought on board because they are bad loans. Because they extort money from clients and there is a clique of RMs associated with people in the head office, it is always easy to have all these approvals. You will be shocked that some clients have even developed close relationships with RMs because they help them to defraud the bank.” Some of the financially troubled Kwagalana Group tycoons with trading operational bases down town are said to be greatest beneficiaries of this sort of thing. Not done, the whistle blower also impeaches the character of some of the securities used to give out loans. “Some of these RMs present fake land titles, fake search results from the lands ministry and actually fake valuation reports. Some properties are overvalued when one bribes. If a client is not willing to bribe his way, his properties are undervalued as a punishment. The acceptance of fake land titles comes from the fact that a network of fraudulent characters has been built within the bank.” The whistle blower says there is also the practice of “smuggling client’s documents/ information to other banks.” Specifically on this one, this is how the whistle blower writes: “Some of these RMs smuggle documents from the bank’s registry, photocopy clients’ files and sell this information to other fellow banks. In all this, the information is given out at a fee. Generally there is a lot of fraud and connivance with clients that if it is not addressed, the bank is seated on a time bomb…May you have any doubt in this whistle blower’s communication, you are very free to do your private investigations into this.” For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755!
