Three held over counterfeit dollars

REMERA - Three suspects, including a Ugandan, are in police custody for allegedly printing counterfeit US dollar banknotes, worth 0.19 million.Gabriel Wanyama, a Ugandan, and Rwandans Michael Ntikiza and Jean Paul Uwayezu, were paraded before journalists at Police headquarters in Kacyiru yesterday. They were arrested on Thursday in Remera, a Kigali City suburb. Ntikiza claims to have been Wanyama’s houseboy. The head of Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Chief Superintendent Costa Habyara, said the trio was arrested after Uwayezu was found with a fake dollar note at a forex bureau in Kigali. Habyara said the suspects were arrested in evening hours after police stormed Wanyama’s home in Remera and seized a box containing forged dollar notes.If found guilty, they face sentence of 5-20 years in jail, Habyara said.Wanyama who is the lead suspect denied the accusations. He said that his colleague, whom he only identified as Lukyamuzi, is the one behind the criminal act.“The box was brought to my house by Lukyamuzi, and told me to keep it as he tried to verify with US Embassy whether banknotes were not fake,” he claimed.But his co-accused Ntikiza refuted that version.“I don’t know anyone called Lukyamuzi, but what I know is that my boss (Wanyama) had on several occasions been coming back home with a lot of Rwandan Francs,” Ntikiza said.“It was my first time to see a US ‘dollar note’,” he said. He confessed that he picked ‘three hundred dollars’ off the bundle of alleged fake notes, and later gave ‘one hundred dollars’ to Uwazeyu to go and change at a forex bureau.Uwayezu confirmed the deal, but pleaded he didn’t notice the currency was fake until he arrived at the forex bureau downtown, where he later ‘tipped’ the police about the people in charge. Ends

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Three held over counterfeit dollars