About 15 shareholders of Special Drivers United (SDU) Ltd company, offering transport services in Rwanda, have decided to reveal that there an internal wrangles within, accompanied by among others, illegal dismissal and lawlessness.
Some shareholders say they were illegally dismissed from the company while were denied their rights for questioning the accountability of SDU Board of Directors.
They accuse the Board of Directors of favoritism, lawlessness while registering new shareholders to name a few.
Jean Chrisostome Bugingo, an already dismissed with three shares in the company said the company worked properly since its establishment in May 2029, but things later changed.
” The injustice started in February 2020. They registered non eligible individuals as shareholders. It was clear that the company was getting profit. Since then, the board decide to hide everything so that we don’t know what was going on. April this year, they started firing shareholders.” Bugingo told this website.
Jean Claude Muhongano, owns six shares in SDU. He says the situation deteriorated when ” The board was questioned for accountability when some shareholders were given works to do unfairly. The one challenging that practice was turned into enemy.”
Jean Sibomana, who was the Head of the committee in charge of verification, accuses the the board of working alone all the company activities.
He says the board of directors started persecuting him, leading to the dismissal for together with colleagues, they uncovered what was wrong.
” We want changes in the company leadership. They don’t listen to our views. They don’t want to change the ways of handling company businesses. Imagine dismissing the shareholders only because he discovered wrongdoings!”
The Board of Directors of the SDU also dismissed Mukamukiga Esperance, who was its legal adviser. She told BWIZA that her dismissal came when she told the board that there is something thing wrong with what they were doing.
“It was totally wrong to fire me in legal terms. The board has no right to fire the member. Only general assembly has that power.” Mukamukiga says
” When I became a member of the board, I presented to them the laws that we introduced. We had our internal regulations established by the shareholders and ofcourse there are others that regulate companies in general.”
” With reference to the law no 007/2021 of 5/2/2021 governing
Commercial companies, especially article 149 stating that the board has no power to ignore internal regulations laws. The board has no legal rights to go against this law.” She added
Applying the same law, in articles 148 and 160 Mukamukiga said the board did the contrary.
Article 148 states that the member of the board has no power to contradict rights of shareholders.
Also, the article 160 states that the decision to dismiss a shareholder is taken by general assembly.
This website called Jovithe Sibomana, The Chairman of the SDU Board of Directors for a comment. He said ” I have no time”
Replying to our message, he said” There’s no internal chaos in our company. Come over to our office for more information.”
The case is in Court of law pending for hearing in December 2022.
