The controversial call to Equity bank call by Deputy President William Ruto was to ask the financial institution to loan Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni millions of shillings to fund last year’s presidential polls in Uganda.
The January 2021 elections were described as the most brutal under Museveni, and the state poured massive resources running into millions of dollars, to ensure the Ugandan president won amid fierce challenge from Bobi Wine.
”The investor had come to my office and asked me to link them with Equity Bank. I took my phone and called Equity and told them there is one of us from East Africa, you have a branch in Uganda, help him if you can. When the guy succeeded, he went and built the factory. Where is the problem?” Ruto posed during an interview.
Dei Pharmaceuticals, Equity Bank, and Uganda President Museveni connection
On June 4th, 2020, President Museveni accused State figures in Uganda of undermining his authority by flagging and stopping inflows of billions of shillings to Dei Pharmaceuticals. The company’s boss Nathan Magoola is a family friend and close associate of President Museveni.
Read: Equity bank dismisses DP Ruto’s claims it gave 15B to Harun Aydin
We can authoritatively reveal, Mr. Magoola is the ‘one of us from East Africa’ the DP meant in his interview with Inooro TV. Mr. Magoola, the close associate of General Museveni paid Ruto a visit at his Karen residence where the plan of Dei Pharmaceuticals acquiring money from Equity Bank with the help of DP Ruto was discussed, hence the famous phone call.
“Magoola and Dr. Kyakulaga, now supported by some African banks such as Equity Bank of Kenya, are creating a world-class pharmaceutical group known as Dei Pharma that will make all the medicine the country needs, and even export some. Incredibly, three days ago, a group answering to the description of the so-called Financial Intelligence Authority had closed their bank accounts claiming that they did not know where their money was coming from and what it was doing,” President Museveni said during a national address on June 4th last year, almost six months to the 2021 Ugandan general elections. The frozen accounts were later opened on Museveni’s orders.
Mr. Magoola is known conman in Uganda
Uganda’s speaker of Parliament sparked controversy in March last year, with a claim that a local pharmaceutical company was about to manufacture an alleged “cure” for the coronavirus, remarks which drew criticisms from senior Ugandan officials and the WHO.
“A professor who manufactured the treatment for coronavirus in the U.S., and he has donated the patent to Uganda and within a fortnight, the treatment will be made here. It will be available on the market here, in Uganda. It’s being made by a company called Dei International. Not that we should be relaxed, but there’s hope,” Speaker Kadaga said.
Apart from duping Ugandans his company had manufactured the coronavirus cure last year, Mr. Magoola was arrested in India in 2013 alongside Ugandan minister Isaac Musumba and MP Michael Mawanda, on allegations of trying to extort $20 million (Sh2 billion) from an Indian mining company Videocon.
Read: Smartmatic; Company Museveni wants to run Kenya’s 2022 elections
DP Ruto brokered the deal to have Equity Bank fund Yoweri Museveni’s presidential campaigns, and Dei Pharmaceuticals was just the conduit for the cash. The money was building a vaccine plant in Uganda and questions like the efficacy rate of the vaccine should have been asked by the bank. Did Equity Bank see a sample of the Dei vaccine to ascertain the authenticity of William Ruto’s claims?
Appearing before the National Assembly’s Finance Committee yesterday, the bank’s managing director Gerald Warui told members of Parliament that it has no customer by the name Harun Aydin and denied advancing a Sh15 billion loan to Mr Aydin, who is linked to DP Ruto. The bank’s CEO did not deny their involvement with Mr. Magoola and Deli Pharmaceuticals.
