Public Service and Local Government Committee of parliament has issued fresh summons to both Stanbic Bank and the directors of Amman Industrial Tools and Equipment Ltd (Aitel), an Indian company named in the botched LC bicycle scam.
On November 26, 2010, the local government ministry purportedly entered into agreement with Aitel to supply the bicycles. The company was contracted to deliver 70, 000 bicycles but failed and its directors have disappeared after receiving 4.7 billion shillings.
Florence Kintu, the committee chairperson told journalists after a closed door meeting with MPs on Tuesday, that the directors sent communication that they would not appear without legal representation. But Kintu noted that Parliament had the powers to summon anyone and she issued fresh summons for the directors to appear before the committee by midday on Wednesday.
The committee has also directed parliament’s Sergeant at Arms, Ahmed Kagoye to deliver the summons to the directors accompanied by Robert Mwebaze, a former local government ministry technocrat, who claims he has been in touch with these directors.
Mwebaze on Monday named three directors of Aitel as Singh Muhinder and Nishita Maini, whose offices he said are located in Naguru, a Kampala suburb. Mwebaze also named Arjunan Rajasekaran, who was the company’s contact person in India. But he declined to reveal a Ugandan director of the company, since the Ugandan legal system cannot allow a foreign company to be registered without local directors.
Kintu and her committee are determined to unearth the faces behind the scam and shame them. She vowed to establish whether the Indians were being used by Ugandans to acquire the money illegally.
//Cue in: the people who....
Cue out: ... we shall get them.//
Stanbic bank was also scheduled to meet the committee on Tuesday but did not turn up. In a letter, Stanbic officials requested for a meeting with the MPs on Friday. But Kintu, says Friday will be too far saying they have sent fresh summons to them too. The officials are expected to appear on Wednesday at 10am.
The Bank is blamed for the loss occasioned to government through the supply of the bicycles. Mwebaze told MPs that Stanbic possessed forged the bill of lading, a document that the ministry claims it used to get Aitel paid by Bank of Uganda through Stanbic Bank account.
