By Our Reporters
On joining MTN as internal legal counsel in 2003, Anthony Katamba (a close relative to Jennifer Musisi) began on a well calculated process to distinguish himself as very powerful. Firstly he worked hard to create strong bonding with influential shareholder and MTN Uganda chairman Charles Mbire who ensured he gradually rose through the ranks. Katamba also took advantage of the Mbire proximity to reach out and build personal connections with powerful bureaucrats at Museveni’s State House, in the security apparatus and the ruling NRM party. Even though he has in the end been demystified by failure to deliver license renewal at just $58m the MTN Uganda was offering, Katamba was able to deliver on many other assignments to great satisfaction of his masters in South Africa-based MTN Group Headquarters. Being MTN General Counsel made him privy to a lot of company information and future plans which enabled him to influence many decisions. In consultation with Mbire, Katamba ensured multi-billion contracting decisions would be made in a manner that enabled MTN win over many powerful friends both in government and private sector. Subsequently lucrative contracting and procurement deals went to entities with which the Ugandan state was happy and this in return gave leverage to Katamba and his godfather Mbire to have unlimited access to State House which in return enabled them to secure pro-MTN concessions from time to time. Any significant procurement decision wouldn’t be concluded without Katamba’s input and, as Wim Vanhelleputte’s CEO predecessor Brian Gouldie painfully discovered much later on, whoever stood in Katamba’s way on matters of contracting Paid a heavy price. When still CEO, Gouldie sharply disagreed with Katamba over a certain procurement prompting the Counsel to block a contract the CEO had awarded without his concurrence. The resultant bad blood saw Gouldie unexpectedly lose his job as CEO MTN Uganda. Earlier on, long serving CMO Eric Van Veen, who was anticipating the CEO elevation, found himself fired, a development that left Katamba and Mbire in a much more strengthened position. Knowledgeable insiders say Van Veen paid the price for his insistence that Patrick Bitature’s Simba Telecom remains 100% in charge of the MTN airtime vending business in Kampala. This was bitterly resented by powerful men at MTN one of whom incorporated an airtime vending company that continues to compete with Bitature in the Kampala space. This is how Bitature got into the current financial problems and is understood to be indifferent about the current MTN woes on grounds that the most powerful people at the company delighted in his woes as his business diminished along with another company called Ken Com. Katamba also ensured MTN endured no bad publicity. It’s the only company that cheated and poorly treated its customers without any major media outlet reporting about it. Why? Katamba always leveraged on the big advertising budget (over Shs800m per month) to cow everybody as writing negatively about the brand would cost any media house business. At the peak of Katamba’s power, all major media houses CEOs were merely a phone call away from him.
SECURITY CONNECTIONS
Following her deportation, Italian Elsa Mussolini posted on social media hinting on the possibility of Katamba being a 5th columnist at MTN Uganda with deep connections in Ugandan security services. A February 2019 top management whistle blower corroborated Elsa’s observations as shall be alluded to later in this story. Yet Katamba’s security connections haven’t just started today. As was manifested in Justice Lawrence Gidudu’s December 2015 ruling, Katamba also worked well with former IGP Gen Kale Kayihura who in the aftermath of Mbabazi fall distinguished himself as Museveni’s defacto number 2. Working with Kayihura’s blue eyed boy Nixon Agasirwe, Katamba ensured managers like Richard Mwami and others who were big-headed and trying to cause trouble for the company were decisively dealt with. Mwami’s close allies like Patrick Sentongo painfully discovered as much upon being arrested and tortured by men who directly reported to Agasirwe. This powerful connections increased Katamba’s relevance in the Museveni regime power calculus as Kayihura desired to intercept phone conversations of especially politicians and ministers that were considered hostile to the President.
WORKING WITH UCC
At UCC, Katamba dealt with the regulator more often than anyone else at MTN. Not even Mbire rivalled his leverage on matters regarding UCC. Being well networked also gave Katamba increased clout among telecom peers to the extent that each time UCC called telecos CEO meetings, Katamba (representing his CEO) is the one who spoke on the behalf of the entire industry except that he sometimes spoke very arrogantly often forgetting that as regulator, UCC was the boss. Sources say that in the caucusing meetings ahead of meetings with UCC, the MTN view always prevailed and became the entire industry’s position to be presented to the regulator. Anyone who opposed the MTN view would be rebuked into silence by Katamba. That is what happened when it came to OTT and mobile money tax. Other CEOs had preferred dialogue and soft approach but MTN insisted on confrontation arguing that peaceful approaches wouldn’t work with the Museveni regime anymore. That is why the State insists MTN managers worked with hostile political forces like Bobi Wine’s People Power Movement to prove their point that the new taxes were very unpopular and politically suicidal. At the UCC meetings, Katamba would bang tables reminding UCC of their legally well-established powers to act independently on all matters. Gratefully his views were always easily bought into by Chairman Mbire and the top bosses in SA. In case government was displeased with anything at MTN, Katamba would be the first to know through his contacts at State House. Working with Mbire, they would swiftly inform SA sometimes to total exclusion of the CEO who would be told these are classified matters. Quite often SA would sanction release of money where necessary and the CEO was always too powerless to demand accountability as the duo would have briefed SA on everything. Hiding under classified assignments, SA would allow Katamba to spend money without accountability yet even the CEO wouldn’t. This naturally made CEOs perceive him as a rival. Gratefully Katamba, through whom MTN would fund pro-NRM causes, always delivered on his GoU-related assignments until the license renewal came and deflated him. To many in the Group HQs South Africa, this failing is shared by both Katamba and Mbire who had over the years distinguished themselves as never-failing defenders of Group interests in Uganda.
LOSING M7 FAVOR
It’s understood that President Museveni, who the duo easily accessed in the past, has lately been very unwilling to meet Mbire. He believes there is a lot that must be cleaned up and reformed at MTN Uganda before once again warming up to Mbire who at some point was a PA to his brother Gen Saleh. It’s also understood that JPAM’s deep connections to Cyril Ramaphosa family (through marriage) has lately been hardening the NRM Chairman’s heart towards his MTN counterpart. Knowledgeable sources say one of the reasons why the license renewal assignment has demystified Mbire is because of Attorney General William Byaruhanga’s silent resolve to cut him to size and put him in his place. Byaruhanga is among those said to be advising the President to make very tough demands on MTN. On the AG’s advice, Museveni is said to be wondering why MTN had originally offered just $22m (for license renewal) which was suddenly revised to $58m which Museveni is rejecting as too little. He wants $100m on top of floating shares and invest another $200m in network upgrade to improve quality of service. Katamba is also understood to have sharply disagreed with a powerful person at MTN regarding the procurement of a service provider to construct the MTN tower at the newly acquired plot opposite UMI along Jinja road. It formerly belonged to BAT and the construction will cost $12m over which the MTN tender board members have been bickering. Some of the deported managers had been raising a red flag saying the cost was inflated. Katamba’s industry-wide influence was also on display the day the telecom CEOs met Speaker Kadaga to defend the scrapping of airtime scratch cards and indeed his views became the group position. Whenever MTN Group HQs questioned any decision in Kampala, Katamba would be used to quieten things by telling HQs this was something the GoU had interest in and wanted things that way. In his 16 years of uninterrupted service, Katamba always epitomized the 2nd line of power at MTN whereby he run his own power structure parallel to that superintended over by the CEO.
OVERCOMING WIM
On becoming CEO in July 2016, Wim plotted to overcome Katamba whose defacto influence he was already well briefed about. He started by smartly demanding retirement of long serving employees but Katamba (who had already done 13 years) somehow survived. GM Lubega, who headed financial services, was among the many top guys who were purged as Katamba stayed put. Wim urged Katamba to go beyond just being General Counsel to prepare for future big things because there is no way he would become CEO without having the requisite business experience. That is how Katamba was cajoled to accept the GM position in charge of Corporate Services. Instead it demystified him because departmental targets couldn’t be met under Katamba partly because he moved many experienced sales employees and replaced them with his own favorites who weren’t necessarily more productive. Hoping Katamba would quit legal and ceased being privy to sensitive company decisions, Wim head-hunted and brought in Enid Edroma from NIRA as new Chief internal Legal Counsel. She was frustrated as Katamba never handed over the legal docket and this caused a sympathetic Wim to arrange for her consolation deployment in MTN Group HQs in SA. There were fears Katamba would sue MTN for bringing Edroma to take his job without acting transparently. When in July 2017 Wim recruited new GMs Olivier Prentout, Anna Tabura and Elsa Mussolini, fellow GM Anthony Katamba didn’t easily warm up to them. He perceived this as efforts by Wim to fortify himself while isolating in top management. Katamba’s people saw the trio as the CEO’s proxies to shrink their man’s clout in top echelons. To the excitement of the Katamba camp members around December last year, rumor started spreading the trio and their patron Wim would face severe sanctioning by the State and this came to pass by way of the January deportations.
HUMILIATING WIM
During the 14th February arrest it clearly emerged what the Katamba camp members foresaw was finally coming to pass when Wim himself was humiliatingly arrested and handcuffed. This was a total departure from the very respectful interactions he had had with the Ugandan security agencies prior. All this was days earlier preceded by a whistle blower dossier purporting to undress Katamba. Addressed to MTN Directors and Managers, the dossier called for his total isolation on grounds that his past association with brutes like Nixon Agasirwe was soiling the MTN brand among families of the victims who suffered police torture at the hands of the Nixon squads operating with Katamba’s full knowledge. Reference was made to Court proceedings (which this news website reported about months ago) where Court ruled against the State in a criminal case where MTN was the complainant on grounds former employees Patrick Sentongo and others had been tortured for confessions to crimes they never committed. The whistle blower referred to incorruptible Justice Lawrence Gidudu’s 10th December 2015 ruling in which the actions of Katamba and Agasirwe were put to unprecedented scrutiny. The fate of ex-MTN Public Access manager Richard Mwami too was extensively discussed by the judge in that same ruling. In fact failure to win such cases was used by adversaries to dispute Katamba’s performance as MTN General Counsel. The whistle blower claimed that the latest top managers’ deportation was pleasant to Katamba who had previously complained about the same people undermining his informal position as the defacto CEO. The whistle blower also implied it was hard to trust Katamba anymore because the anti-new taxes strategies that had in confidence been discussed late last year on a very exclusive whatsapp group had curiously ended up in the hands of State security operatives who were relying on the same to interrogate the trio before eventual deportation. Saying nobody was safe anymore, the whistle blower called for Katamba’s isolation from the company top echelons. The trio was accused of working with Bobi Wine to escalate public anger against OTT and mobile money tax. Wim began getting messages that, in a manner pleasant to Katamba, he too would soon be deported like his three allies purged earlier. Only hours after purporting to fire Katamba Wim was summoned at SIU Kireka for some interrogation which resulted into his deportation. He was accompanied by MTN external lawyer Barnabas Tumusingize of Sebalu Lule & Co Advocates. At Kireka, Wim was humiliated like never before including being kept yawning the whole day until 6pm when he was finally ushered into the interrogation room. He was accused of criminally continuing to work with employees Uganda had deported earlier. He defended himself saying this was to facilitate their hand over and secondly mere deportation from Uganda didn’t make them cease to be employees of MTN Group. He was also focused on the Dubai business trip where he transacted MTN business with them well knowing they had been deported and investigations are still on. Katamba was to attend this Dubai meeting too but Wim curiously left him behind. After the 14th February Kireka interrogation, Wim was driven to Entebbe Airport and deported home to Belgium without being allowed chance to return to his home or office. This was exactly two days after Katamba’s purported knifing.
LARGER IMPLICATIONS
This chaos will only complicate the process to get the MTN license renewal for another 10 years at a cost of $100m which government is demanding against the MTN offer of $58m. The background to all this is the President’s claim accusing MTN of underdeclaring its revenues in order to diminish tax obligations. Sometime back he claimed this under declaration was costing government over $400m annually and its understood heads could at some point at URA over this matter. The settled tax dispute case at Commercial Court Division is one of the many aspects of possible collusion that Museveni is looking into. Originally the tax claim against MTN was Shs356bn which controversially dropped to mere Shs22bn after URA concluded a court-supervised mediation exercise. It’s something that continues intriguing the President, the very reason ISO is continuing to look into it whereafter a report will be submitted to the President who badly wants to identify the appropriate officials to punish. MTN, whose woes are working well in favor of Airtel that is increasingly distinguishing itself as a preferred telecom services provider for many large entities, is also under pressure to float shares for Ugandan natives to acquire up to 30% shareholding as a means to check on profit repatriation for which Museveni has previously bashed MTN.
