The Ugandan North American Association (UNAA) is currently stuck with a court fine worth Shs. 710Million, ($192,000) which was erroneously filed against the body.
The case from a Nevada court was supposed to be filed against UNAA Causes, a rival association which was sued for breach of contract by Resorts World Las Vegas, a 5-star hotel in Las Vegas.
UNAA Causes reportedly cancelled events at the hotel owing to the VISA backlog, but the case was mistakenly filed against UNAA.
This website understands however, that instead of correcting the error, UNAA officials instead sat on the case and didn’t forward the emails to UNAA Causes.
The UNAA Executive is said to have decided to hold onto the court case with hope to use it later to pick a fight with UNAA Causes, only for them to end up being held liable.
After weeks of silence on the matter, UNAA President Henrieta Wamala last week issued a statement blaming UNAA Causes CEO David Muwanga for presenting himself as part of UNAA.
“The President of the Ugandan North America Association (UNAA inc) wishes to inform leaders, members, sponsors, supporters, partners, associates and the general public that UNAA inc, is not and has absolutely no relation to or affiliation with UNAA Causes in any capacity or at any level whatsoever,” she said in the statement.
“As such, while the name, Ugandan North America Association is referenced in the judgement, the organization has absolutely no responsibility for or is in any way culpable in this matter,” the statement continues.
But UNAA Causes CEO Muwanga says UNAA officials are to blame for their current predicament.
“What is so upsetting is how mail can be withheld for at least four months and apparently there was no effort to engage the hotel to establish why the lawsuit came about,” Muwanga said.
“These folks had an opportunity to tell the hotel that we are two different entities, we don’t know how the Convention went when that happened.”
Prime News has learnt that UNAA officials signed for the Court sermons and held onto them for nearly four months.
It wasn’t until the court signed off on the judgement without any of the accused parties attending the Court session that UNAA went on the offensive against UNAA Causes.
In the US it is an offence for a person to open another person’s mail, and is punishable by up to three years in jail.
Muwanga confirmed that when he heard the rumours that UNAA had some mail involving UNAA Causes he called UNAA’s State agent in Massachusetts, Ms Jackie Tabie who said that the mail was already forwarded to UNAA’s President Mrs. Henrietta Wamala
Muwanga also contacted UNAA Vice President, Joan Bavuga who acknowledged UNAA’s Communication with Resorts World Las Vegas through the Association’s President Mrs. Henrietta Wamala.
Ms. Bavuga advised Mr. Muwanga that UNAA is not going to share the mail they received with UNAA Causes.