Kampala, Uganda: A recent article published by a Ugandan local daily claiming that Billionaire Sudhir Ruparelia was ordered by a UK court to surrender his mobile phone for forensic analysis has been found to be false, misleading, and not supported by the actual ruling.
In the judgment delivered on July 24, 2025, Justice Paul Stanley KC, sitting as Deputy Judge of the High Court in London, made no such directive regarding Sudhir’s phone. The judgment primarily dealt with whether DFCU Bank could amend its defence to include conclusions drawn from the controversial PwC forensic reports — which the court ultimately rejected in part due to lack of admissible factual grounding.
“To the extent that DFCU wishes to plead, as factual allegations that it positively intends to prove, any of PwC’s specific conclusions, paragraph 24.4 attempts to do so in a way that is inconsistent with effective preparation for a fair trial,” the judge ruled.
Nowhere in the 42-page ruling (seen by DailyExpress) — which covers detailed legal reasoning on pleading standards and admissibility of documents — is there any mention of Sudhir Ruparelia being compelled to submit his mobile device, nor a court order compelling Sheena Ruparelia to hand over her personal emails, as local newspaper claims.
Legal experts close to the matter have termed the Observer report as “fabricated conjecture” that twists procedural context to create sensationalism.
Instead, the ruling curtailed DFCU’s reliance on the PwC reports, which the claimants had argued were inadmissible since PwC was not licensed under Ugandan law at the time and lacked credible sourcing. The judge declined to adopt PwC’s findings as factual truth, emphasizing that relying on their conclusions would disrupt the fairness of the trial.
“The PwC reports, whatever their merits, do not resemble a pleading,” the judge observed, adding that they cannot be adopted wholesale as evidence of primary fact.
Legal analysts say the ruling dealt a substantive blow to DFCU Bank’s defence strategy, narrowing their ability to use Bank of Uganda-commissioned reports as basis for justifying the controversial 2017 acquisition of Crane Bank.
The claimants; Sudhir Ruparelia and shareholders of the defunct Crane Bank, allege that the sale of the bank was orchestrated through a fraudulent and sham bidding process, resulting in the undervalued transfer of assets to DFCU Bank under the guise of regulatory action.
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