Court Finally Grants Bail To City Lawyer,David Balondemu

Court Finally Grants Bail To City Lawyer,David Balondemu

By Angel Lubowa

COURT

The Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court has finally granted a five million shillings cash bail to Kampala District Land Board Chairperson Lawyer David Balondemu who is facing charges of alleged forgery of medical documents.

He was Thursday granted bail following his application and finding that all his three sureties who included his wife, sister and a brother in law were substantial.Court had the previous day rejected the first sureties.

Court ordered each of the sureties to execute a non cash bond form of 20 million shillings. He has also ordered Balondemu not to travel out of the country without permission from Court and had his passport deposited at Court.

Whereas Prosecution’s Viola Tusingwire had wanted Balondemu to be denied bail on the basis that he was summoned seven times to appear in court in vain even when criminal summons were put in the newspapers, the Magistrate ruled that substituted service in newspapers is not an effective service.

Therefore Kayizzi agreed with the accused Balondemu that he might not have not read the summons in the newspapers.

He adjourned the matter for hearing to November 26th 2024 and further extended a warrant of arrest against Balondemu’s Co accused Dr Hassan Ssegujja of Mulago Hospital, directing the Police to arrest him immediately upon sight.

Prosecutors allege that Balondemu and Mulago Hospital’s Dr Hassan Ssegujja and others still at large in 2023 at Kampala Hospital knowingly and fraudulently made a false document , a prescription medical form dated November 7th 2023.

It is also alleged that at Dr Hassan Ssegujja and lawyer David Balondemu knowingly and fraudulently made a false document, a CT scan medical form dated June 12th 2023 at Kampala Hospital.

For purposes of this case, Balondemu was arrested on October 11th 2024 at Entebbe International Airport.

Trouble for Balondemu started in 2023 when he was arraigned at Buganda Road Court on charges of conspiring with two others to obtain money by false pretense.

The State alleged that Balondemu, two others and others still at large between the months of November 2022 and April 2023, at Bloom Advocates with intent to defraud, obtained US Dollars 553,000 from KG unlimited LLC by falsely pretending that they were going to award it a contract of supplying agricultural drone sprayers and fertilizers to Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries whereas not.

His arraignment at Buganda Road came few weeks after his release by the City Hall Magistrates Court on charges related to defrauding a Korean Investor in a bogus Gold deal of 2.2 billion shillings. However these charges have since all been dismissed for lack of evidence.

However, as he was applying for bail for the charge of obtaining money by false pretense at Buganda Road Court, Balondemu furnished Grade One Magistrate Winnie Nankya ‘s court documents indicating that he was scheduled for surgery at Kampala Hospital as one of the grounds to seek temporary Freedom from prison.

For that reason, the State which was being represented by Ivan Kyazze on that day, went out to verify the authenticity of the documents .

In his feedback to Court, Kyazze tendered evidence showing that Balondemu had never been a patient at Kampala Hospital and neither was he scheduled for operation according to the Kampala Hospital Chief Executive Officer Dr Peter Kibuuka.

“According to our records, Mr Balondemu has never been a patient at Kampala Hospital. There is no scheduled TURP surgery on November 22nd, 2022 at 8 am for Balondemu as indicated in the letter dated November 7th, 2023. Therefore the purported documents dated June 2nd, 2023 and November 7th, 2023, were not authored by Kampala Hospital,” wrote Kibuuka in his letter responding to a request from the Director CID Kibuuli.

Consequently, the prosecutors levied charges of forgery against Balondemu. Magistrate Nankya had previously warned Balondemu and his lawyers that he would be charged with forgery, should it be discovered that the medical letters were not genuine.

It’s against this background that he was charged and remanded several times as his lawyers became state witnesses.