Banker to serve jail term after appeal flops

By Hillary Nsambu                       

A former employee of Stanbic Bank Limited, Abdul Kharim Kaluuma, must serve a full seven-year-jail term that was imposed on him by the Anti-Corruption Court, the Court of Appeal has confirmed.   

The court also confirmed the orders that the appellant’s land comprised in Block 203, situated at Lubya village in the suburbs of Kampala with the developments on it, must be confiscated.

The Court further confirmed that the monies on Kaluuma’s Barclays Bank account No 0115000705 must be frozen and in addition, his tomato sauce-producing-machinery should also be confiscated. 

Kaluuma was also barred from holding a public office for 10 years pursuant to the Anti-Corruption Act.

Justices Remmy Kasule, Eldad Mwangusya and Prof Lillian Ekirikubinza Tibatemwa presided over the court.

Acting Assistant Director of public prosecutions James Owere-Odumbi had told the court that between 2009 and 2010, the appellant, Kaluuma, stole a total sh787,518,500 that belonged to Stanbic Bank Limited.

He had also alternatively been indicted for causing financial loss to the bank.

Odumbi further told the court that Kaluuma used to divert that money in commissions into individual persons’ accounts with whom he used to share the loot, thereby causing financial loss to his employers. 

Represented by Sophia Nakandi, the appellant, Kaluuma, had appealed against the judgment passed by Justice Paul Kahaibale Mugamba of the Anti-Corruption Division of the High Court, faulting him that he had failed to properly evaluate the evidence on record and causing a miscarriage of justice. It also led the trial court into imposing an excessive sentence.

The appellant had also opposed the orders requiring confiscation of his properties and that the freezing of his monies in the Barclays Bank had not been justified.  

However, the court dismissed as unmerited Kaluuma’s appeal saying that :  “The trial judge correctly found that evidence of the prosecution witnesses corroborated his confession, while the confession itself also corroborate the prosecution evidence adduced in court.

We are satisfied that the sentence imposed upon the appellant and the orders made were lawful. This appeal is dismissed; the judgment of the High Court is upheld. The appellant is to serve the sentence imposed on him to the full and all orders made should be carried out,” the court ruled.