The Commercial Court of Uganda has granted an order for an arrest warrant against Fred Ntabazi following a recent ruling in a hearing to determine whether Ntabazi should furnish court with security to appear before it. This suit arose from a case brought forward by Ssengendo Paul and Nakungu Gladys, a couple who sued Fred Ntabazi and his company, Pio Crypto Center Investments Limited jointly for breach of contract, fraud, and recovery of money to the tune of UGX 791,000,000, interests and profit, damages, tracing orders and costs of the suit.
According to the couple, Fred Ntabazi convinced them to invest a combined sum of UGX 175,000,000 in the business of online forex trading with Pio Crypto Center Investments Limited and promised them a return of 10% per week for a period of 48 weeks. Fred Ntabazi failed to pay the couple the promised sum, and instead tried to coerce them to relinquish their contracts with the company and instead invest with a SACCO Ntabazi was carrying on the same business with.
The SACCO had been started following claims by Ntabazi that banks, and later the Government, purportedly did not want people to have money and that they were the ones frustrating the payment process onto people’s accounts. Upon this foundation, the Kampala Digital Financial Commodities Traders Cooperative Society Limited (KDFC) was formed for investors to transfer their money since the laws of Uganda were “a little relaxed on Sacco operations”.
The couple however had other plans. Along with 33 others, a police case was filed and they opted to institute both a civil and criminal suit against Ntabazi prompting him to go on the run. According to the pleadings in the case, Ntabazi currently has no known place of residence and does not appear before court. He also reportedly fled Kampala and was spotted in Kisoro.
For this reason, the couple decided to apply for a ruling against Ntabazi for security i.e orders that an arrest warrant be issued, attachment of his bank accounts, that he deposits UGX 791 million in court as security and that 13 of his vehicles are attached all to ensure that Ntabazi appears in court for the main suit and that payment of the outstanding debt is assured in the event the couple wins the case.
Court granted the first order for the arrest as it was established that he truly is on the run and this was interpreted as an intention to delay and frustrate court process. However, the court declined to attach his accounts and his vehicles as the estimated value of these assets was not provided by the plaintiffs (the couple). The 13 cars the plaintiffs wanted to attach were discovered by the Plaintiffs from Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) transaction records and the court considered this insufficient evidence of ownership. Furthermore, the judge held that the law requires that the value of the assets be attached in order to ascertain that the value of the assets is not much higher than that of the claim.
Who is Fred Ntabazi?
Self-proclaimed “Bishop” Fred Ntabazi was the lead preacher at One Light International Ministries, a church situated on the fifth floor of Padre Pio Building. He reportedly sourced his first recruits from his “flock”. According to sources, the self-professed bishop had masses borrowing money from banks, saving schemes and loan sharks while others sold land, cars, houses and cattle to invest with him.
A source called Caleb Rutetebya was quoted to have said that clients would be asked to invest in the business with a minimum of UGX 5 million and that this would after two weeks start fetching the client 10% (UGX 500,000) every week as interest for a year. .
Prior to this case, there have been reports of similar dubious dealings by Ntabazi dating back to December 2019. An earlier report by New Vision of bogus crypto deals he was peddling. According to the report, there were over 1000 people scammed including high profile police officers, pastors and business persons who he lured into the business venture with the promise to make a quick buck. However, it was suspected that Ntabazi enjoyed the protection of some senior government officials because his victims were hesitant to come forward to report the conman.
It is worth noting that despite its name, there is no indication that the Pio Crypto Center was actually engaged in any crypto trading and according to the source, his modus operandi was to use money from new clients to pay old clients.