Government-owned Bukedde Newspaper has publicly apologized to top city tycoons Dr. Sudhir Ruparelia, Ehphrain Ntaganda, Godfrey Kirumira, and Hassan Bassajjabalaba for tarnishing their good names in a baseless propaganda story they published.
Referring to the newspaper’s edition of12th February 2022 and 22nd February 2022, Bukedde without proof stated that President Museveni had ordered the office of Inspector General of Government (IGG) to investigate the businessmen for milking billions of money from the government through dubious land compensation deals.
Bloggers also reported that Ephraim Ntaganda and Sudhir Ruparelia working with top Ministry of Lands officials got a substitute title for the Naguru estate land initially given to Opec properties. Sudhir and Ntaganda have now subdivided the Naguru land and are selling plots to interested buyers.
The story would then be adopted by social media bloggers who went on to allege that Sudhir and fellow tycoons collude with Lands Registry in creating fake land titles in wetlands, gazetted forest reserves, lake and river shores and on all public lands, where planned infrastructure like roads, railways and power lines are due for development.
To insinuate and exaggerate the instance, the bloggers further stated that the tycoons get information from government officials about the impending projects then later get the titles without formal minutes, instruments, URA tax before they register the land in fictitious names and companies.
Some (bloggers) added salt in their fake stories and stated that Ephraim Ntaganda got fake titles on government land, later selling the land to Sudhir who constructed warehouses on the land and rented the same to the government only now to be receiving billions of money in rent.
Dr. Sudhir who rarely gives time to nonsense opened up on the ‘cooked story’ trashing all the baseless allegations as untrue before adding;
“Leave them with their fake things, those people are creating nonexistent stories to find a living forgetting that if I act they may regret,” he warned. “The process of allocating Naguru land to Meera, Roko and others was transparent and was handled by ULC. In any case, why would I pay anybody for that?…that’s is rubbish anyway,” Sudhir added.
However, in fear of the legalities that would follow, Bukedde on Monday, March 7, issued an apology published on page four the story was mistakenly published with no facts and asserted that there’s no ongoing investigation against the tycoons.
“We apologize for the inconveniences and harm the fake story may have caused to the tycoons and our readers.”
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