By Nasser Kasozi Akandwanaho
LONDON — For Sudhir Ruparelia, the £200 million Crane Bank claim is no longer only about money.
Nearly a decade after the Bank of Uganda sold off Crane Bank, Uganda’s richest man is preparing for the major commercial trial in London determined, he says, to make regulators and powerful institutions think twice before repeating what was done to his bank.
“This case is about more than just the lost funds,” Sudhir told the Norwegian publication Panorama News ahead of proceedings expected to begin on Monday.
“The Bank of Uganda and other institutions involved must think twice before attempting anything like this again.”
Crane Bank and its former shareholders are seeking more than £200 million in damages from companies and individuals linked to the takeover of the bank’s operations.
The defendants will have their day in the London court.
Crane Bank was placed under Bank of Uganda management in October 2016. Its assets and liabilities were transferred to dfcu Bank in January 2017. The Ruparelia family has spent much of the decade since challenging that sequence of events. The dispute has now reached London.
Among the defendants are the Dutch bank Rabobank and the Norwegian company Norfinance, which is partly owned by the state-owned development financier Norfund. The trial is expected to run for several months and to examine years of decisions surrounding the bank’s collapse and the transfer of its business.
At the centre of the claim are allegations that the process by which Crane Bank was taken over, and its business transferred, was unlawful.
The claimants argue that parties to the transaction ignored warning signs about the circumstances in which the bank became available for acquisition.
The Rabo Partnerships and two former Rabobank executives who sat on the dfcu Bank board, Albert Jonkergouw and Willem Cramer, are accused of approving the transaction despite clear warning signs. In particular, Sudhir’s lawyers point out that both received an email in late 2016 indicating that $27.5 million from the sale of a portfolio of Crane Bank loans would go to the central bank without being recorded. This payment has been characterised as bribery.
It is further alleged that dfcu Bank acquired the bank without an independent valuation, having been approached by the Bank of Uganda before the administration and promised a price well below market value.
Rabobank and the other defendants said they could not comment while the matter is before the courts. Lawyers for Mr Jonkergouw and Mr Cramer, the Bank of Uganda and FMO also declined to comment.
The Parliament of Uganda in a 2019 inquiry, through its Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises, condemned the sale and concluded that the Bank of Uganda had broken the law on several points.
Sudhir’s lawyers also point to the United States conviction and prison sentence of Hong Kong intermediary Patrick Ho for bribing Uganda’s then foreign minister. Ho was acting for a Chinese conglomerate which, the claimants say, had been offered Crane Bank by the central bank. When that arrangement fell through, dfcu Bank allegedly entered the picture.
Sudhir, who has continued to build interests in real estate, hospitality, education and other sectors, says the size of the compensation claim does not fully explain why the dispute has been pursued for so long. His larger concern, he says, is accountability — and a warning to international development-finance institutions that invest in Africa.
“Foreign development funds that invest in Africa should not get involved in criminal activity,” he told Panorama News.
After ten years of litigation, he is not presenting the case merely as a fight to recover a lost fortune. He wants it to leave a lesson: that institutions entrusted with power must know their decisions can ultimately be challenged, however long it takes.
