Embattled city lawyer Bob Kasango says he was shocked by the Law Council’s decision to strike him off the list of practicing advocates in Uganda, describing the ruling as ‘unfair’.
The once flamboyant attorney was over the weekend punished after he was found guilty of fleecing a client, Vivine Mukuru, and a property buyer, John Kaweesa, of hundreds of millions of shillings in a botched $385,000 Kololo house deal by selling it to multiple buyers instead.
A teary Kasango told the Observer, “I am really shocked to hear that the hearing was made. The members who decided the case got the facts of the case wrong and clearly they never made any reference to my defense. They took complainant’s allegation for gospel truth. So, they say that they struck me off, for how long is it? Is it for life?”
He claimed that he was never Kaweesa’s lawyer and, therefore, did not defraud him of even a shilling.
“What the law council has done is to unilaterally cancel the contract between the buyer and seller. Why is the law council silent about the money that was paid to the owner? What is its fate?” he wondered.
He said his offer to refund the money (five cheques of $38,500 which all bounced) to Kaweesa was in good faith, not the admission of wrongdoing.
This is not the first time Kasango is in trouble, on June 24, 2015, his name surfaced in a Public Account Committee hearing of the pension case scandal where billions of shillings were fraudulently paid out by Ministry officials currently under interdiction. During the hearing, Parliament heard that the lawyer through his firm allegedly received an illegal payment of Shs15 billion from Public Service ministry before the case was concluded in court. The money was paid in 2011 and 2012 to a lawyer after he allegedly presented a court order to the then Principal Accountant of Public Service, Mr Christopher Obey and the interdicted Permanent Secretary, Mr Jimmy Lwamafa, authorising payment of legal fees for a case which had not yet been concluded in court.
Kasango was also accused but later cleared of receiving sh3.3b from the government on behalf of Tooro queen mother Best Kemigisha for the land she sold. The prosecution said Kasango allegedly received the money but did not remit to Kemigisha.
