In May 2017, Ugandan prosecutors secured convictions for money laundering in the Equity Bank trial, the first case of its kind in the country. Six of the accused in this trial, involving the embezzlement of $1,450 million from the bank, were convicted by the Anti-Corruption Court in Kololo of embezzlement and money laundering, and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 5 to 12 years. The court ruled that Equity Bank was to receive $1,25 million as compensation, and vehicles, land and about $70 million as additional compensation. 

One of the prosecutors of this ground-breaking trial successfully completed ICAR’s Train-the-Trainer (TTT) programme on financial investigations and asset recovery in Uganda whilst the trial was on-going. Trained by ICAR experts over a period of five months, he was certified as a trainer himself at the end of 2016. 

He, as many other participants, expressed his appreciation to the ICAR trainers. The prosecutor showed a keen interest in learning to distinguish between the predicate offence and money laundering, and to focus on money laundering as a standalone crime, which can deprive a suspect of his ill-gotten gains. He also recently participated as a trainer in an ICAR workshop on Advanced Operational Analysis in Uganda, which focuses on the analysis of suspicious transaction reports in money laundering allegations. ICAR congratulates him and all others involved in the Equity Bank trial for this success.