In a bid to exhaust all the avenues of evidence and to seek justice in the matter before court, Simbamanyo filed Misc. Appl. No 0583 Of 2022, in which they stated that they are privy to information that there were bank transactions that occurred between 1st October 2020 and 8th October 2020 respectively, a week before the auction, on the Katende Sempeebwa dollar account with Equity Bank, that are relevant to the determination of issues arising in the underlying suit.
In their application, Simbamanyo further stated that there was correspondence between the bank, its lawyers and those of Meera Investments (the prospective purchasers) regarding a performance guarantee contract between Equity Bank and Meera Investments, wherein the bank guaranteed to sell the said properties to Meera Investments in exchange for wetting the beaks of Equity Bank top executive with a token of 1million dollars. And indeed, this money was paid into the Bank’s lawyers’ dollar account on 1st of October 2020.
However, Equity bank, LuwaLuwa Investments and Katende Sempeebwa, in their replies to court never denied being in possession of the said bank records; instead, they sought cover in a confidential privilege between lawyer and client, alluding to the fact that they had the documents but they were confidential.
The Simbamanyo lawyers argued therefore that the documents will show the unlawful, fraudulent and illegal dealings that preceded the purported auction that never was.
They demonstrate that the outcome of the sale was manipulated in advance and that which was purported to have been a public auction was just a sham.
In his ruling Hon. Justice Stephen stated that both categories of information sought to be discovered are material and relevant to the extent that the applicants intend to use their content to advance their already pleaded case, which is that the said transactions will demonstrate that the sale of the applicant’s mortgaged properties was done under a dishonest collusion between the bank, its lawyers and the purchaser to unfairly and unlawfully defeat the interests of the applicants.
The Hon. Judge went on further to observe in his ruling that the advocate-client privilege does not protect all manner of information and or communication between an advocate and his or her client as it only protects communications made in order to obtain legal advice and of a confidential nature.
Equity Bank was thus given 14 (fourteen) days within which to comply with the order.
However, in a bizarre twist and in order pervert the course of justice both Equity Bank and Sudhir have run to the Court of Appeal to overturn Justice Mubiru’s order in a bid to suppress the production of this key evidence.
It is feared that it may be possible to rescind this order in the court of Appeal where it is said Sudhir has extensive influence, in which case this matter of the illegal and fraudulent sale of the Simbamanyo properties will be dead and buried the way the BOU case Vs Crane bank was killed, despite the overwhelming evidence that Sudhir looted his own bank of colossal sums of money, although the supreme court not only allowed him to get away with it but exhumed his dead bank and handed it back to him despite the vehement protestations of the regulator.
They also awarded him colossal sums of money which BOU through the Ministry of Finance is expected to fork out any time now.
After the devastating blow Equity Bank and Sudhir recently suffered in the Simbamanyo case, they have now resorted to legal Ping-Pong with the aim of killing the case.
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