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Columnists
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Written by Pius Muteekani Katunzi
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Sunday, 25 October 2009 18:46 |
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 There is panic in the city. Men who stash huge bundles of money under their beds and bathtubs are more worried about the least suspect breed of thieves who, include their wives and next of kin, than rodents.
In the past, Italian mafias, invested in rodent poison more than sleep preventive pills. They were worried about rats eating at the edges of their money or peeing on it. So the mafias ensured the stores where the money is hidden is fumigated and regularly supervised.
In Uganda dramatic stories are emerging every other day about men who decide to keep suspect cash under their beds. The recent case is that of Damian Akankwasa, the now suspended boss of the National Forest Authority (NFA) who is pinning his wife Juliet for pulling a fast one on him.
These men have lost their freedom. In the middle of the nights when their wives turn in bed, they too must turn. When the women cough, the men must fake a cough to signal to their wives that they are wide awake too therefore they cannot use the night to pinch the cash.
When they move to the bathrooms, the men shadow them and peer through the peep hole to see whether they are not tampering with the bundles that were hidden under the bathtub. Only foolish men, especially those who work in government agencies, will try to knock the teeth out of their wives when they discover that some notes are missing from the bundle.
A story is told of a senior government official whose wife is a bit crackers, who discovered during the CHOGM bonanza that he had a lot of dollars stashed away at home. The wife asked the husband why he had decided to transfer the government safety vault to their home.
The husband said it was not government money but his. The panicky gentleman tried to take the money away from his wife but she insisted that she could only surrender the cash at the Police station. Smelling trouble, like any smart thief, the husband surrendered the money to the wife, licked his wounds, and the matter was closed.
Another senior government official, who holds an accounting officer’s position, also had about $ 500,000 pinched from his home by his house helper who also happened to be a relative. This was so embarrassing for this gentleman that he couldn’t even report the matter to Police.
He is highly connected, he could have used Rapid Response Unit (RRU) to hunt down this thief, but he knew involving Police would open a can of worms. So he bit his lower lip and decided to call it a bad gamble. Apparently, this is the unwritten rule of the game, especially for government officials who can’t explain their wealth; don’t try to play clean when you are dirty too.
A new kind of mafia families are emerging in this country. Some of these families — strangely with Government connections — have become crude loan sharks. There is a lot of illicit and disposable cash floating in the country which in turn has set artificial values of property.
There is a lot of cash-based, debt-free business rising at a dizzying rate. A glance at Kampala’s hills shows that they are dotted with hotels, apartments and mansions whose owners are not known to have any debt in a bank. There is a risk that these family organisations are profiting by buying control of struggling businesses. If they lend you money, they will try to kick you out by making you fail to pay back the money.
The banks have tightened the purse strings, and many companies risk going bankrupt, so they have to resort to loan sharks. And with sloppy agencies supposed to monitor money laundering, the savvy and connected mafia families are poised to put some of their money into financial markets.
They will behave much like any investor who looks for good returns. So stashing money at home is not part of the past, its part of the future. We just have a parallel financial system that has been allowed to evolve. It’s not that people don’t have faith in the banks; no.
The author is the Business Development Director, The Observer Media.
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Last Updated on Monday, 26 October 2009 14:54 |
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