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Meet America�s most wanted man in Uganda
Feb 1 - 7, 2004
KAMPALA � He is wanted by the US government on 140 criminal counts including mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and forfeiture. The FBI has been investigating him for more than five years but hasn�t once questioned him directly � perhaps because he has been living a low-key life in Uganda since 1999.
Monitor�s Daniel Kalinaki (L) interviews Mr Van Brink at his Luzira residence.
The Monitor�s Daniel K. Kalinaki tracked down Van A. Brink at his home in Luzira and asked him about the criminal charges, his life and whether he is hiding in Uganda. How does it feel to be wanted by the US government? Unbelievable. Were you surprised, having been investigated for five years? Yes. I left the US in 1998 and moved to Grenada, a separate country. I founded and headed a licensed Grenada bank under the Grenada Offshore Banking Act of 1994. Where are Grenada�s charges against me for criminal activities?But your failed bank had American depositors Yes, and we also had depositors from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, UK, Norway, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and so forth. The bank had depositors from over 100 different countries as of when I resigned. So, to which laws is a bank�s chief executive liable to operate in accordance? The country granting the banking license or those countries from which the depositors may come? Does Japan claim jurisdiction over the
MD of Standard Chartered Bank in Kampala for acts he does while at the bank in Kampala? If you did nothing wrong, why the charges? It is not anything I can prove in court but you need to understand the way we were doing our business to understand why I was considered a threat to be discredited and eliminated. We started Fidelity in August 1996. Our total capitalisation was US $100,000 (Shs 200 million). It was supposed to be a small operation serving a select handful of clients. When business grew too quickly, we decided to start the First International Bank of Grenada in October 1997. In our first month, our deposits were about U$500,000. Three months later we were probably at U$5 million. By the end of 1998 we were pushing U$50 million. On October 1, 1999, when I resigned, we were topping $100 million in deposits. What does that have to do with the fraud charges?
Mr Van Brink shows the location of Grenada on the map.
I am coming to that. As our bank grew, the banks that were losing deposits as their customers turned to us became very unhappy. A banking group that could grow from $500,000 in total deposits to $100 million in deposits in just three years was a threat. We were offering interest rates on term deposits from 40 percent per year to 100 percent - that made many bankers nervous as they were offering between 2 and 5 percent on savings and fixed deposits. How could you realistically pay interest of 100 percent? As our deposits grew, so did investment opportunities. Then we started being offered huge assets, first as �assets under management.� Asset packages in the hundreds of millions of dollars started coming to us all the time. It just went on and on and on. We soon got to the point where we were no longer interested in accepting assets under management - too much work for too little pay. We switched to a joint venture basis. The party bringing the asset would enter into a joint v
enture agreement with us agreeing to deed the asset outright to the bank so that the bank owned it free and clear, and then we would share with that party 50 percent of whatever we got from that asset. Let�s say you were able to place $10 billion in assets and achieve a yield of just four percent per year. How much is that? It is $400 million. Remember, though, you have to split the income fifty-fifty with the party who deeded the asset to you. That leaves $200 million. Now if you have a bank with $40 million in deposits earning an average of 100% annually, how much do you still have left over after paying your depositors the promised yields? Let�s see. $200 million minus $40 million equals $160 million. So can you afford to pay a depositor yield of 100 percent annually? Yes, you can. And not all deposits were at that rate. Some were 2.5%, some were 6%, others were 30% per year and so forth. If a few were at 200% per year, so what? So, how can you precisely explain the charg
es and the allegations? The point is that in the Anglo-Ameri!
can judicial system, an accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet, for the past five years I have been officially denounced and effectively pronounced guilty of all manner of financial crimes against depositors. I have been paraded through the American and international media as the most notorious - dirty rotten white-collar scoundrel of this generation. Are you guilty or not? I committed no crimes; I am simply being witch-hunted. The many mail fraud charges amount to the fact that we had to send cheques received from Americans back to the US for clearing.If Barclays in Kampala receives a cheque drawn on an American bank, it too will have to send the cheque back to the US for clearing before it can credit the deposit as actually received. The same was true at First Bank.The many wire fraud charges stem from the fact that, yes, we did transmit funds by bank wire. The money laundering charges stem from the fact that the bank had to transact its business throu
gh accounts held at commercial banks, trusts and contracted service companies. No private offshore bank receives and transmits funds by itself. All must use other service providers. Heinous crime? No. Banking fact of life.The conspiracy charges seem to stem from the fact that those who were indicted knew and worked with each other. Every bank in the world has people who know and work with each other. They say that the property that was purchased with the proceeds of crime should be forfeited by each of the defendants. The US government wants me to hand over the so-called �Mbuya palace� that I bought here. This can�t happen; first, no proceeds of crime were used to purchase the property. Second, I didn�t purchase any Ugandan properties, palatial or otherwise. First Bank bought two executive homes in Mbuya, not palaces. The bank later sold these properties. I was not an officer or a director of the bank at the time the bank sold them, neither was I the purchaser of the propert
ies from the bank. I neither own nor control those propertie!
s, so how can the American government demand that I forfeit them? The indictment says that buying the Mbuya �palace� was one way of laundering money. How do you respond to that? First of all, let us consider that only �dirty� money needs to be laundered. You know, the idea of drug lords and illegal arms traffickers with suitcases full of cash who want to pass the illegitimate funds through some sort of legitimate-looking bank accounts so that they come out �clean.�Early in the days of Fidelity Bank, I saw that this could be a future problem if we weren�t careful. People were transmitting funds to us; scores, hundreds and eventually thousands of people. I didn�t have the manpower and resources to personally investigate each of the bank�s depositors. So I added this requirement upon depositors. To send funds to Fidelity Bank and to First Bank, the depositor had to get his or her home bank to add this text to the funds transmission: �The remitter is known to us and we are satisf
ied as to the source of funds.� The US government says you created a web of accounts through which you were able to launder this money.Like I�ve said, neither Fidelity Bank nor First Bank could receive US dollars by direct transmissions from depositors. We had to establish account relationships with commercial banks, trusts and contracted service companies and transact all incoming and outgoing US dollar funds through them. The thing I was concerned with in respect to money laundering was simply that the funds received were known to be and were certified to us as �clean money.� It is widely rumoured and believed that you are hiding here because Uganda has no extradition treaty with the US government. Why did you come here?I came here to try and save the Co-operative Bank. It was at the invitation of [Lt. Gen.] Salim Saleh who had been told that I could help draw up a plan to rescue the bank.But the former Governor of the Bank of Uganda, the late Charles Kikonyogo, said you w
ere not a �fit and proper person.� Is that not correct? Yes !
he did but it does not matter anymore. I wasn�t the one bidding to become a Co-operative Bank shareholder; it was First Bank. But I would rather not comment about that since the bank is long closed and the governor also passed away.Why did you stay in Uganda after the Co-operative Bank deal fell through?Some members of parliament encouraged me to invest here, to show that First Bank was serious about Uganda. It was upon that advice that First Bank purchased the executive homes in Mbuya and the Cape Villa estate at Lake Victoria.What other investments did First Bank make in Uganda?The bank also invested in a Lake Victoria resort operation, some warehouses had made a down payment on land in Nsimbe to build housing units. There are claims that your wedding was phoney. Tell me about your wife.I have been married for three years now to a beautiful and caring Ugandan woman. We do not have any children yet but I have taken a keen interest in helping my extended Ugandan family where
I can.If you insist that you are not guilty, why don�t you go back to America, face the law and set the record straight?Although I committed no crime, I believe a crime was committed against First Bank�s depositors by closing the bank. Volunteering myself for detention pending a lengthy trial will not redress matters for the victims. But neither are hiding from justiceI am not hiding from justice. Since January 12, 2001, the day the petition was made to Grenada court to put the bank into involuntary liquidation I have been developing ways to make money to repay my depositors. How? It is mainly by finding assets from which we can make money.Do you have any evidence of these assets?For obvious security reasons, I have none of those documents here in Uganda. These allegations that I defrauded investors of over 200 million dollars present security risks to me, to my wife and to our extended families, both here and abroad. People read stories about $206 million in alleged fraud a
nd conclude that I am sitting on piles and piles of money. I!
am not.Assuming you are not deported, do you ever intend to return to the US?I spent 46 years without stepping foot outside the US, save for one tour bus ride across the California border into Mexico and maybe a half-dozen short trips to Canada. For me there was no world outside of the US. Since then my eyes have been opened. There is a whole world out here that isn�t the United States. One day, when matters are sorted out, I�d love to visit my family and friends again.How would you describe yourself?Not as the criminal mastermind of gigantic banking fraud. I am a non-criminal, non-terrorist, peace-loving and productive citizen of the world living in Uganda. Fact FileMr Brink was the Chief Executive Officer for two offshore banks from 1996 to 1999: Fidelity International Bank of Nauru, a small island nation in the Pacific Ocean and the First International Bank of Grenada, another small island nation in the Caribbean Sea. He resigned from Fidelity Bank and First Bank in Octob
er 1999. First Bank was placed into court-ordered liquidation in 2001, a liquidation process that is still continuing. The appointed liquidator, PricewaterhouseCoopers� Marcus A. Wide last year retained Shonubi, Musoke & Co. Advocates to pursue the matter in Uganda.
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