DON’T LET THE FACTS GET IN THE WAY OF A GOOD STORY

I am a sucker for the happy ending story, especially about businessmen who started from scratch and made it big. But like the next guy I can not help but have my head turned by hot money tales.

The tales of people striking “deals” – often by being paid a bribe or illegal commission for “work” done.

Here a few of my choicest not in any  order of preference.

1. Money in the boot. The procurement deal had gone down as planned with the official responsible set to collect his several hundreds of millions as a result. On the appointed day the official called the seller to his watering hole near the top of one of Kampala’s hills. They shared a few beers before the official said he would like to leave. The seller sent his two hanger-ons to go transfer the money –packed tight in carton boxes from one car to the next. A fellow patron looking out of the washroom window counted 6 boxes shifting from one car to the next. On return to his table he made a rough calculation that assuming sh50,000 bundles stacked six high, two across and eight along the length each box had at least sh480m. Do the math!

2. The driver with a home in Munyonyo. During the height of the Public Service  corruption scandal the story that threw me for a loop was the arrest of a driver whose job it was transfer money from point A to point B. They arrested him as he drove out of his gated home in Munyonyo area, driving his less than five years old Toyota Hilux double cabin car.

3. Christmas comes early. It had been a long weekend and a good stiff drink would do before he went home. When he checked at the ATM in addition to the sh237,564 he was expecting there was a 10 preceeding the figure. He checked in three other ATMs in the vicinity and yes he had ten million more than he expected and it was only March. All was soon revealed when on Monday he got a call from the accountant at work ordering him to route nine million of the money to another account. Christmas did not come early for him again because the accountant in question was fired soon after, but apparently the racket had been going on for years.

4. Changing X5s like underwear. They had known him from when he was just out of O-Level. He was helpful around the club and several of them can claim to have helped him pay his way through university. Through connections at the club he got a job at a leading multinational in the finance department. The rumours begun – he had built himself a house with a pool, he had hundreds of millions of shillings invested on the stock exchange, his breakfast daily cost sh50,000 delivered from a high end restaurant. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when he totalled his new BMW X5 and before they could commensurate with him the next day at the club he drove in, in a new X5.

5. What a million dollars looks like. He was literally sweating from the experience. His friend had had a briefcase delivered to him with the equivalent of a million dollars in it. Wads of a hundred dollar bills stacked four by two by 12 – okay that was $960,000 but he said he got a million dollars maybe the $40,000 was in his coat pockets. The challenge was how to launder the money, pass it through legitimate businesses to hide its source and justify his coming into such an amount. At the corner of your neighbourhood there is a block of apartments going up at record speed, could that be him?

6. What goes on in the basement? The call had come in to organise a $700,000 payment within hours and the management was in a frenzy, cobbling together the figure from several of their branches. The client came in at 12:53 – its the kind of detail you remember when you are passing on such amounts of money. A senior executive had come down to the front office to personally supervise the transfer, maybe get a tip for his “effort”.  The client came in picked up the money, stuffed it in a sports bag. He was escorted to the basement where he had parked his car. He walked to a car opened the passenger door placed the money on the floor below the dash board and walked off. But not before the beautiful lady in shades, short skirt and heels had been seen.

Whenever I hear these stories I wonder how we can be breathing the same air with people carrying around millions or billions in their boots.

If you hear another one please share – the story, I mean.