City Radio director arrested over fraud

CRIME - Police is holding a director and shareholder of City Radio FM for allegedly diverting a major shareholder’s dividends to his personal account. Police sources say retired Major Alex Shumba duped his Ugandan partner and in-law Chris Katuramu that he was banking the profits to a joint account.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

CRIME - Police is holding a director and shareholder of City Radio FM for allegedly diverting a major shareholder’s dividends to his personal account. Police sources say retired Major Alex Shumba duped his Ugandan partner and in-law Chris Katuramu that he was banking the profits to a joint account.

But upon checking, Katuramu found deposits were not adding up.  Katuramu has a 90 percent stake in of the Kigali-based FM station which hit the airwaves in 2004.
Shumba owns the remaining 10 percent shares.

The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) director chief superintendent, Costa Habyara, confirmed of Shumba’s arrest this week.

"After the radio was started, they opened up an account in BCR (Rwanda Commercial Bank) where all the profits were supposed to be banked. However, Shumba later opened a separate personal account in Zigama Credit Saving Scheme and started diverting the money,” Habyara said.

He said Shumba had since January diverted about Frw20 million to the Zigama personal account.  He explained that Shumba is suspected to have connived with the station’s director of finance and administration, Denis Ndemezo, who is said to have gone underground since Friday last week.

Katuramu is a brother to former Toro Kingdom Prime Minister, John Katuramu who is currently on a death row for killing Toro’s Prince, Happy Kijjanaggoma.

Efforts to contact Katuramu were futile as his cell phone was switched off by the time we went to press.
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