Wim Vanhelleputte, who signed up with MTN Uganda as chief executive on August 1, 2016, is mid air to Europe at the time of uploading this story. His deportation order was signed by Internal Affairs minister Jeje Odongo on February 14.
Wim ran out of luck after he was involved in a verbal exchange with Anthony Katamba, the general manager Corporate Services. The bad blood between men who should be thinking together hit the lowest when on Thursday afternoon security finalised plans to deport Wim back to Belgium. He was reportedly escorted by Immigration officials in handcuffs.
There was a deportation order form making rounds on social media before CIID Grace Akullo confirmed it. At the time, Wim was at Entebbe international airport waiting his flight which left around 11.30pm.
His deportation order says Wim must remain out of Uganda indefinitely.
Wim’s deportation brought the number of foreigners to four at MTN that have been showed the exit in the last couple of weeks. The others are Olivier Prentout, Annie Bilenge Tabura and Elza Muzzolini.
The deportations have thrown Uganda’s biggest telecom into panic, leaving Management leaderless.
Without captain at MTN, Ugandan security must be determined to bring its investigations at the telecom giant to the logical conclusion.
Police, ISO and CMI are working together to close in wrong elements at mtn and have been asking hard questions including about espionage, tax evasion, and destabilizing the country.
On Tuesday and Wednesday this website wrote about the outbursts which led to Wim and Katamba bitter exchanges. It was reported that Katamba threatened Wim with deportation, forcing Wim to declare Katamba fired. Katamba’s threats have however come to pass. Katamba 1 Wim 0.
Wim has had a bumpy ride as MTN Uganda CEO. He replaced Brian Gouldie in 2016 from Airtel DRC boasting of experience in the telecom industry in several African countries.
Among challenges he found were mobile money fraud cases, simcard deactivations and the renewal of the telecom license to extend its operation in Uganda.
President Museveni gave several conditions for the renewal including asking the biggest telecom in Uganda to go public at the stock exchange. The Ugandan leader maintains that MTN was taking out a lot of money from Uganda and was not investing enough in the country.
Other sources say the president believes MTN were not very transparent with their taxes.
Details coming.
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