Acting on behalf of CID department of Police, D/ASP Gift Loy Namono has written to Absa Bank top management imploring them to ensure that Mr. Herbert Olwo (who is their Head of Operations & IT) cooperates with detectives who are investigating the circumstances under which a customer Sylvia Bahizi had a total of Shs71,534,040 stolen from her two bank accounts using electronic means earlier this month.
A criminal investigations file (SD Ref 51/06/10/2022) was opened up at Jinja Road Police Division by Bahizi after her phone and ATMs getting stolen from her during the night of Thursday 6th October 2022. The stolen ATMs were subsequently used to separately facilitate or effect the criminal transfer of Shs4m and Shs67,534,040 from her Absa bank account, on Monday 10th October which was four days later. The money was stolen from Bahizi’s two Absa bank accounts namely 5800543772 and 6004388990 respectively.
According to Bahizi’s lawyers (NSB Advocates), the said monies were transferred to some other bank accounts within Absa bank and without. Some of it was transferred or stolen through mobile money means. Bahizi, through her Station House-based attorneys, raised the matter with the bank but the indifference with which Mr. Olwa responded (in his capacity as Head IT) left her with no option but to become suspicious wondering why a bank would breach fiduciary duty to such an extent.
The lawyers wrote to the bank officially on Bahizi’s behalf but they too have since been ignored, a thing which has naturally made the client to feel tormented and more frustrated hence her decision to escalate matters to CID department of the Police whose D/C Chris Maganda has been tasked to inquire into the bank’s conduct and more so Mr. Olwa.
One of the Police CID letters to the bank management indicates that Mr. Olwa had been expected to respond to summons on Friday 21st October (room 18 of Jinja Road Police Station) but he didn’t.
Bahizi’s fire-spitting lawyers have since characterized this defiance as unacceptable impunity and have written another follow up complaint to the Police CID Director Dr. Tom Magambo demanding that he personally gets involved to embolden his officers and detectives against Absa bank’s top management bullying approach.
In their fresh letter, dated Wednesday 26th October, the lawyers make it clear that going after Mr. Olwa personally is the only way through which their client will be shielded against possible miscarriage of justice which they say is already happening because of the indifference and contempt with which Absa bank has treated her so far.
This how Bahizi’s lawyers conclude in their 26th October plea to Dr. Magambo: “The purpose of this letter is to formally request for your timely indulgence so that you can take over investigations of this matter to save our client from suffering from a miscarriage of justice.” Our efforts to get a comment from Absa bank didn’t yield much
