Equity Bank in collusion with city tycoon Sudhir Ruparelia are employing all manner of tactics to get away with fraud in a bid to grab city architect Peter Kamya’s Simbamanyo Properties.
Kamya, a local investor who is the proprietor of Simbamanyo House along Lumumba Avenue, Kampala, and Afrique Suites Hotel in Mutungo, dragged Equity Bank, Ruparelia’s Meera Investments, Ronald Luwangula’s Luwaluwa Investments and the Commissioner Land Registration to the High Court for fraud.
Whereas Simbamanyo lawyers Muwema & Co. Advocates presented a water-tight case in court, Sudhir and his lawyers have since embarked on machinations aimed at derailing the hearing of the main case on merit by resorting to all sorts of delaying tactics so that the main case is not heard. This way, they hope to conceal their illegal and fraudulent activities in the disposal of the said properties.
It should be noted that the dispute between the parties started last year in October when Equity Bank purportedly auctioned Simbamanyo House to Sudhir, under his Meera Investments, and Afrique Suites to Luwangula under Luwaluwa Investments, claiming that Simbamanyo Estates had defaulted on a loan facility.
However, City Architect Kamya contested Equity Bank’s claims and filed a suit in court challenging the alleged sale of the properties. In addition, he filed for a mandatory injunction i.e to regain his properties until the case of illegal sale and fraudulent acquisition had been disposed of.
However, the Deputy Registrar instead issued a temporary injunction maintaining the status quo, prohibiting the alienation of the said properties, i.e the purported buyers were not to transfer, dispose of or convert the said properties in any way. Simbamanyo appealed this order because it did not give them temporary possession of their properties as the main case was being heard.
On filing this appeal in court, it is alleged that tycoon Sudhir and Equity Bank embarked on a campaign to frustrate all Kamya’s efforts to repossess his properties.
Insiders privy to the matter contend that Sudhir’s first attempt was when his lawyers pulled this card of failure to take out summons for directions by Simbamanyo’s lawyers, which prompted the court to dismiss the case on grounds that the suit had abated.
Further, when the Simbamanyo lawyers appealed the said suit abatement vide Appeal No.3 of 2021, Sudhir’s lawyers then pulled yet another technical card on the grounds of an advocate swearing an affidavit on behalf of a client for which the case has been dismissed in a ruling delivered by Lady Justice Susan Abinyo.
In her ruling delivered by email on July 30th, 2021, Lady Justice Abinyo stated thus:
I find that this appeal is incompetent and not proper before this honourable court as the defective affidavits render the appeal incompetent
Accordingly, the preliminary objection on point of law by the respondents is upheld.
This appeal is struck out as required under Order 6 Rule 29 of the Civil Procedure rules on ground that it has been disposed of on a technicality rather than on merit.
Subsequently the trio i.e. Equity Bank, Sudhir and Luwaluwa put out a news item on all media platforms that Simbamanyo Tycoon had lost a Shs40Bn case, hotel and building.
Muwema and Co. Advocates, the Simbamanyo lawyers, have subsequently put out a statement to put the record straight.
They state that the above claims were not only false but misleading and that they did not make a correct representation of the facts of the case. That these claims were part of a well-orchestrated media propaganda to conceal this high-grade case of fraud and unethical conduct by Equity bank and its conspirators in their attempt to perfect a plot to smash and grab the Simbamanyo properties.
The lawyers went on to clarify that the claim by the conspirators that Simbamanyo had lost interest in the case and because of this it was abated was not true but a veiled attempt to delay justice.
And that the flimsy reasons advanced by them for the alleged abatement lacked depth in a complex case of this nature.
They further pointed out that a case which is abated rightly or wrongly is a case which has not been heard on its merit or at all and therefore any claim that a party has lost such a case are frivolous in the extreme and devoid of any legal basis.
“What is interesting is that the Judge overlooked/ignored the substantive issues in this case. This is a very serious case that involved the illegal, forceful and fraudulent acquisition of the suit properties,” a source close to Kamya said.
“This is a case where a lot of personal property and records were destroyed in the process. And yet the court allows it to abate on an alleged procedural matter,” the source wondered.
We have since established that Simbamanyo has vowed to fight On to save his properties which he built from scratch brick by brick. And his lawyers have confirmed that they have already filed a third suit HCCS No. 464/2021 to counter Sudhir’s machinations.
