By Sharon Tibenda

21^st Jan 2013:

The management of Bank of Uganda (BOU) has denied any wrong doing in the 6billion corruption scandal that recently rocked the National Medical Stores (NMS).  The Daily Monitor newspaper of Friday, January 11 had reported that senior official from BOU were among those being investigated for the fraud.

In a statement, however, BOU acknowledged that it had received instructions on December 11, 2012 from the Ministry of Health (MoH) to transfer USD $462,399.53 from their account held at Bank of Uganda to a purported account of the National Medical Stores in ABC Capital Bank.

However, in the course of carrying out what BOU called “…the usual procedural verification required for all payment instructions”, it discovered that the account to which Bank of Uganda had been instructed to transfer the funds in ABC Capital Bank was suspicious.

As a result, BOU said it “…blocked the payment and brought the matter to the attention of the Ministry of Health, and other relevant authorities” – a move that BOU says led to the current investigation.

BOU thus maintains that it is the vigilance of its staff in our Payments and Settlements Department that led to the blocking of the suspected fraud before it went through.  END: Login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories mid-week for our updates

Twitter: @UGCorrespondent

Facebook: Uganda Correspondent