| Ugandan jailed in Canada |
| Wednesday, 26th April, 2006 |
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Tuesday – A pillar of Winnipeg’s African-Canadian community was led out of a courtroom yesterday crying and in handcuffs to await sentencing for stealing $3.2m from a client’s bank account over a 10-year period.
According to Canadian press, James Frederick Kasule, a personal banker and financial adviser at the Royal Bank of Canada, stole the funds from a Winnipeg doctor.
Between February 1994 and March 2004, he transferred various amounts directly into his own personal account.
“I am sorry,” a sobbing Kasule, 47, told Crown attorney Donald Melnyk as he was led out of court in following sentencing submissions before Queen’s Bench Justice Brenda Keyser.
Melnyk said the crime demanded a six-year sentence but defence counsel Norm Cuddy said a five-year sentence would be more appropriate.
Kasule is active in the African refugee community. He fled Uganda in 1982 for Winnipeg and started work at the Royal Bank in 1984.
Kasule is active in Folklorama and is credited with helping to found the African pavilion before leading it for seven years.
Cuddy said Kasule coached youth soccer in River Heights for five years, had been a volunteer at Deer Lodge Hospital, was active in the home-building programmes of Habitat For Humanity and taught Sunday school at St. Stephen’s Anglican Church. He also helped African immigrants and refugees with their financial affairs and income tax filings, without any charges.
Kasule’s 10-year reign of theft was “remarkably unsophisticated,” transferring funds from the doctor’s account into his own.
Cuddy said at one point, Kasule transferred $1.9m in one go out of the doctor’s account directly into his own.
Cuddy said Kasule had tried to pay the doctor back by investing $1.5m of the stolen money in high-tech stocks but lost it all.
The lawyer said his client told him the thefts began as a way to
finance fertility treatments for his wife, including trips to a fertility clinic in New York city. Later, he used the money to help out family members, friends and other Africans who had arrived here without any support.
Cuddy said Kasule’s father, a prominent lawyer, was killed during the early years of the Idi Amin dictatorship. Kasule went to a Ugandan university and obtained a commerce degree and went into banking. However, he said senior bank employees were subject to constant kidnappings, extortion and killings during the early 1980s.
Melnyk said it wasn’t clear why Kasule stole his client’s funds except to support an extravagant lifestyle.
Ends |
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