When a 64-year-old Canadian consultant was led into the dock at Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court on Friday, charged with fleecing a foreign investor of $1.5 million over gold that never existed, he joined a cast that now runs into the dozens: a roster of Ugandan fixers, shell “refineries” and security companies that has turned the country’s most lucrative export into its most notorious con.
Michel Faille, a resident of Mestil Hotel in Nsambya, was remanded to Luzira Prison by Chief Magistrate Ritah Neumbe Kidasa until August 12. Prosecution alleges that between July and October 2025 at Acacia Mall in Kamwokya, Faille and others still at large obtained $1.5 million, about Shs5.6 billion, from Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur by falsely promising to ship 16 tonnes of gold to Dubai, and that he was separately found in Kololo with 740 kilograms of nuggets suspected to be gold, without a dealer’s licence. Faille denied both charges, and State Attorney Grace Amy asked for more time to complete inquiries.
His is the newest entry in a fraud that Ugandan investigators have finally begun to map by name. More than 20 companies in the gold trade are under active investigation by the Police Mineral Protection Unit over fraud, investor scamming and illegal mineral dealings, with several already before the courts and their trading licences under review. Police spokesperson Rusoke Kituuma and the Energy Ministry’s geology and mining commissioner, Agnes Alaba, confirmed that at least 20 private firms are being inquired into under a joint PMPU–Energy Ministry report, over the scamming of investors from Asia, North America and Europe of billions of shillings.
The firms named in that dragnet read like a directory of Kampala’s gold underworld. They include the Muyenga-based Hawks Guard Security, Nsambya’s B-Safe Security Systems, Duck Hunters Security Services, Aurus Traders, Spanex Cargo Company, Kerlibar Logistics, Hey Transport, Berkshire Traders, Midasgko Mineral Trade, Quantum Refineries and Analytical Laboratories, Gemstone Refinery, Progress Mining Logistics, Blessed River Stone, Cyclopes Defence Systems, Alakara Processing Plant, Alpha Refinery, Davinnet Gold Dealers, Liverstrong Logistics, Real Sunex, Benal Group Uganda, Green Link Freight Logistics, Nexcorp Ventures, Nilton Smelting and Nam Global Minerals. Earlier, the African Centre for Energy and Mineral Policy had also flagged Trans Equator, Simba Refinery, Metallic Commodities and Gold Vault Uganda as implicated in fraudulent dealings.
Strikingly, the fronts are often not refineries at all, but security companies. Muhammad Ali, who previously managed Duck Hunters Security, was remanded over a scheme that fleeced Dubai-based investors of $3.5 million, about Shs13 billion, after posing as a well-connected facilitator and steering them to purported suppliers; the investors first bought 10 kilograms of gold worth $700,000 from Spanex. Ali’s audacity did not end there. He was re-arrested by the State House Anti-Corruption Unit as he arrived for a hearing, and charged, alongside a co-accused, Mahmoud El-Gazzar, with forging medical and marriage certificates to secure bail. Through Hawks Guard Security, an Indian national, Thomas Vinal, allegedly defrauded a businessman of over $2 million, while Spanex Cargo had already been flagged in the joint police–ministry report as a firm recommended for closure.
Behind the companies sits a recurring cast of Ugandan facilitators, and the courts now hold a growing roll of them. In the case of Nigerian businessman Mark Gbillah, self-employed Ugandan Abdul Madjid Kahirima was charged over base metals mixed to pass as gold at Bukasa-Muyenga, alongside Kajjubi Tevin Kyome and secretary Tibasiima Barbra, who used the shells Legacy Refinery and Emerod Agency. A businessman named Luyima was charged over a scam of more than Shs2 billion after posing as a Congolese dealer using the false identity “Likambo Augustine,” with the DPP reinstating charges against co-accused David Balondemu, Eric Mkwe, James Jeff Mugisha and Godfrey Maviri. James Ssentumbwe faced a $150,000 fraud in which an accomplice brandished a forged State House identity card, and in a Turkish investor’s case, Ali Kalisa and Kasibante Farouk Yaawe were arrested at Kajjansi. Four more, Edson Ogwang, Ronald Safari, Joseph Karumba and Jacob Opio, were held over the alleged fleecing of a South African of $103,050 through a firm promising exports to Dubai, one of them carrying a forged card claiming he was a government tester from the Ministry of Energy.
How deep the roots run is best told through one name. Canadian investor Clifford Max Potter lost about $1 million between 2016 and 2019 after entering a gold purchase agreement with Ugandan businessman Stephen Bairukanga, into whose accounts the money was deposited before the promised gold vanished, prompting scrutiny of whether the banks involved complied with anti-money-laundering rules. A second Canadian, gemstone dealer Assi Soubhi, lost about $200,000 in a counterfeit deal in 2017, his cooperation leading to prosecutions for false pretences, conspiracy, impersonation and forgery. The trade is old, patient and professional, and its victims span the globe: American Serge Chistov lost more than Shs2.2 billion buying mines that did not exist through two downtown Kampala lawyers; Ethiopian nationals lost $1.9 million; and German investor Christian Arndt lost about $1.5 million in six months.
What gives the fraud its menace is how far it reaches into the state itself. In May 2025, four Police Flying Squad officers, including a superintendent, were arraigned over the aggravated robbery of gold worth $110,000 from John Vian Tumukunde in Nakawa. A UPDF deputy division commander and his guards, arrested over an alleged armed robbery and abduction of a gold dealer in Mubende, were ordered released without charge. And the deals now end in blood. British-Zimbabwean investor Jama Munyaradzi was robbed of cash and killed after a December 2025 deal, his body dumped in Lake Victoria and recovered at Malembo landing site, with Tonny Kasule and three others sent before the General Court Martial on murder charges.
The cons thrive because Uganda is, in effect, a laundry for the region’s gold. Most gold traded here is smuggled from the DRC and South Sudan, then passed off as Ugandan using fraudulent documentation before onward export, mainly to the UAE. A SwissAid study estimated illicit African gold flows at $23.7 billion to $35 billion a year, with roughly 60 percent of Uganda’s gold ending up in the UAE. Into that murk step the scammers, offering bullion at cut prices to buyers who cannot tell smuggled metal from fake.
The scale of the reckoning is only now becoming clear. Since February 2025, at least 56 suspects have been arrested and 50 cases registered in what officials call the biggest gold-scam crackdown in Uganda’s recent history. Yet gold remains the country’s top earner, bringing in $5.2 billion in 2025, and every shilling of that boom is a lure. Uganda has built a fortune on gold it barely mines. It has also built, in the same shadow, an industry of men who sell it to the world and deliver nothing.
