Uganda arrests 16 in alleged $4 million gold deal fraud

A gold trader allegedly paid $4 million to prepare a 2,030-kilogram gold shipment for Dubai. Now at least 16 people, including four police officers and Congolese businessmen operating in Uganda, have been arrested in connection with the transaction, according to Daily Monitor. Investigators have recovered suspected gold, but its composition is still awaiting analysis.

The complainant, Castillo Paredes of Dubai-based gold trading company ARJ Holding LLC, allegedly lost the money in dealings involving people attached to Real Sunex Refinery Ltd in Kampala. Police put the payment at about 15 billion Ugandan shillings. Their preliminary account places the alleged scheme between May 2025 and July 2026, with a general inquiry opened on August 20, 2026. The allegations remain under investigation.

A refinery visit and a cryptocurrency payment

According to the police account reported by Daily Monitor, Paredes travelled to Uganda for a transaction involving 2,030 kilograms of gold. There, he met a lawyer he knew as Mwasa Mohammad. The lawyer introduced him to a seller identified as Charly Sangara and an agent identified as Asiimwe Moses. Paredes was then taken to Real Sunex Refinery in Kampala’s Kololo area, where the transaction took place.

Police said seeing gold at the refinery persuaded the complainant to pay for smelting, documentation and export to Dubai. Smelting involves heating material to recover metal. These were the purposes police gave for the payment; the $4 million was not described in their detailed account as the purchase price of the entire shipment. Paredes allegedly transferred the money through a cryptocurrency account supplied by one of the suspects, using digital assets rather than a conventional bank transfer.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Julius Tusingwire Ceaser, who heads the Police Mineral Protection Unit, told Daily Monitor that investigators had opened a case of obtaining money by false pretence. That allegation concerns securing someone’s money through deception. He said the case was being investigated under Kampala Metropolitan East, and that statements from the complainant and witnesses had been collected.

Suspected gold seized, six people charged

Detectives from the mineral police, crime-scene officers and police information-technology specialists searched the premises, according to Tusingwire. The operation recovered 190 bars and nuggets of suspected gold, along with documents investigators considered relevant to the case. Eight vehicles were also impounded and taken to the Police Mineral Protection Unit yard. The recovered material has not yet been confirmed as gold.

Police recovered 190 bars and nuggets of suspected gold, with analysis still pending, according to unit commander Julius Tusingwire Ceaser.

Six suspects have so far been charged with obtaining money by false pretence under Section 285 of the Penal Code Act, Daily Monitor reported. They were identified as Asiimwe Moses, Songole Thiery, Kagarura Dicken, Nakahosa Soleina, Christian Kilyombo and Charly Glody Mata. The report does not say that all those arrested have been charged, nor does it detail the alleged roles of the four police officers.

The next developments to watch are the analysis of the seized bars and nuggets, the continuing police inquiry and the court proceedings against the six charged suspects. Those processes will determine how the allegations over the promised shipment and the $4 million payment proceed.