On October 20, 2016, Bank of Uganda took over Crane Bank, a financial institution businessman Sudhir Ruparelia had built into one of the four largest commercial banks in Uganda. Ten years later, I still consider the decision to close Crane Bank and transfer its assets and liabilities to dfcu Bank one of the most regrettable episodes in Uganda’s economic history. Crane Bank represented something much bigger: proof that a Ugandan entrepreneur could build a major financial institution and compete in an industry largely dominated by foreign-owned banks.
We lost more than a bank
Uganda frequently talks about promoting local investment and building an economy in which citizens own major businesses, yet when one of our own built a bank capable of competing with established international institutions, we watched it disappear. Founded in 1995, Crane Bank grew in two decades into one of the country’s biggest lenders, in a sector that demands substantial capital, public confidence and strict regulatory oversight. That achievement mattered beyond the wealth of its shareholders, because it showed what local entrepreneurship could accomplish where success is hardest to come by.
Ownership matters in banking more than in most industries, because banks collect deposits, extend credit and influence the direction of investment across the whole economy. I have nothing against foreign investors, since Uganda needs international capital and foreign-owned banks contribute significantly to our growth, but a healthy economy should also have strong banks owned by its own people. Crane Bank represented that ambition, and its disappearance reduced the presence of indigenous private capital among Uganda’s largest banks. Its presence gave local businesses another major source of financing and helped maintain competition in the banking sector.
The Auditor General’s findings cannot be ignored
My biggest concern is not simply that Bank of Uganda intervened, but what emerged about how it handled the bank afterwards. The Auditor General’s special audit raised serious questions about the Shs478.8 billion that Bank of Uganda reported spending on liquidity support and related intervention costs before dfcu agreed to pay Shs200 billion, interest-free over 30 months, for selected Crane Bank assets and liabilities. Auditor General John Muwanga reported that he could not verify the Shs478.8 billion because of inadequate supporting documentation, and that no valuation of Crane Bank’s assets and liabilities was carried out before the transaction, with Bank of Uganda relying instead on an inventory report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and due diligence conducted by dfcu, the buyer.
The parliamentary Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE), which investigated the closure of several banks, concluded that Bank of Uganda contravened the Financial Institutions Act in closing and disposing of them, including Crane Bank. On the central question of whether the regulator even knew the value of what it was handing over, the committee’s verdict was blunt.
“The inevitable conclusion therefore is the BoU did not know the exact assets and liabilities it was disposing off. The reliance by the Central Bank on the due diligence undertaken by an interested party and eventual purchaser to purport to determine the value of assets and liabilities was imprudent and an abdication of statutory responsibility.”
This is where I find the affair impossible to defend. An institution entrusted with protecting Uganda’s financial system transferred a bank built over two decades, employing Ugandans across the country, without first establishing what it was worth. The public deserved a process that could withstand scrutiny over valuation, accountability and compliance with the law.
The litigation that followed only deepened those doubts. After Crane Bank Ltd (in receivership) filed a notice of withdrawal of its appeal in September 2021, the Supreme Court in February 2022 dismissed the appeal with costs payable by Bank of Uganda and confirmed that the receivership had ended on January 20, 2018. The ruling reinforced a simple principle: a regulator’s authority should never place its decisions beyond scrutiny, particularly when those decisions determine the fate of a major commercial bank.
The dispute is far from over
On October 5, 2026, a trial involving Crane Bank, its shareholders, dfcu and other defendants opened at the High Court in London, scheduled to last about 16 weeks. The claimants allege that Crane Bank was deprived of its value through unlawful conduct connected to the 2017 transaction, while the defendants dispute the allegations, and since the court has yet to rule, those claims should not be treated as established facts. Nevertheless, the scale of the case shows how far the consequences of Bank of Uganda’s decisions have travelled beyond our borders.
The costs are also mounting. In August 2026, dfcu reported a loss after tax of Shs15.768 billion for the first half of the year, which the bank attributed largely to provisions for potential liabilities and legal costs associated with the London litigation. Its underlying banking business remained profitable. A transaction meant to resolve a banking crisis in 2017 is still generating substantial costs a decade later, and that alone should force Uganda to reflect on whether its resolution processes protect economic value as well as depositors.
Ordinary Ugandans have a stake in this
Some people see the Crane Bank dispute as a fight between a wealthy businessman, the central bank and another commercial bank, but the consequences of losing a major locally owned institution extend well beyond its shareholders. Employees faced uncertainty, businesses had to adjust their banking relationships, and customers lost an independent banking option. Depositors were protected through the transfer of their accounts to dfcu, which was important, but protecting deposits and preserving a locally built bank are two different achievements, and we accomplished the former while losing the latter.
There is also the question of investor confidence. Building a bank requires enormous capital, public trust and years of investment, and when one of the country’s most prominent indigenous banks ends in valuation disputes, parliamentary investigations and years of expensive litigation, aspiring Ugandan investors are entitled to ask what kind of environment they are being asked to build in.
We must learn from the Crane Bank mistake
None of this means protecting local businessmen from regulation or allowing distressed banks to gamble with depositors’ savings. It means recognising that a successful bank resolution should protect depositors, preserve financial stability, comply with the law and avoid the unnecessary destruction of economic value. Could Crane Bank have been recapitalised? Was there a restructuring arrangement that could have preserved its identity? Were all reasonable recovery options exhausted before its assets and liabilities were handed over? These questions deserve far more attention than they have received.
Sudhir Ruparelia lost a bank, but Uganda lost something bigger: a major institution built through local entrepreneurship, with the potential to deepen indigenous participation in the financial sector. Ten years later, the dispute remains alive in a foreign courtroom while Crane Bank no longer operates as an independent bank. We cannot change what happened in 2016, but we can demand greater transparency, accountability and careful consideration of alternatives whenever a major financial institution faces distress. If we fail to do so, the greatest loss may not be the bank that disappeared, but the Ugandan-owned institutions that might never be built because we failed to value the ones we already had.