In the High Court today, the Katanga trial shifted, if only momentarily, from blood and ballistics to balance sheets and boardrooms. The prosecution, led by Jonathan Muwaganya, pressed Ms Molly Katanga on the financial life of the businesses she had built and run alongside her late husband.
The questioning was deliberate and pointed. Company records were produced. Shareholding structures were examined.
The suggestion, never crudely stated but carefully implied, was that in the days following Henry Katanga’s death, his widow had moved swiftly to consolidate control.
Ms Katanga did not retreat from the facts. She acknowledged that she had introduced her son and daughter into the companies.
But her explanation was measured, almost practical in tone. The businesses, she said, could not be left to drift. Suppliers had to be paid. Obligations had to be met. Staff depended on continuity.
In her telling, this was not a reordering of ownership, but an effort to keep the machinery running.
Crucially, she rejected any suggestion of intermeddling with the estate. No shares, she insisted, had been transferred. The legal ownership structure remained intact. What had changed was not title, but management.
The exchange sharpened when the prosecution turned to bank accounts. Mr Muwaganya put it to her that she had withdrawn all the funds. It was the kind of allegation that invites suspicion, even without elaboration.
Her response was immediate and firm. These were not accounts she had suddenly discovered in widowhood, she said.
They were accounts she had always operated. From their inception, she had handled payments, settled creditors, and run the financial side of the businesses. Her late husband, she told the court, had never operated those accounts.
Ms Katanga is accused of killing her husband on the night of November 2, 2024, from their bedroom in Mbuya, a Kampala suburb.
She has consistently denied the charges and insists she was a victim of domestic violence with her defence team insisting there was a high possibility that Henry Katanga had turned the gun on himslef after beating his wife to near death.
Ms Katanga is jointly charged wth her two daughters Patricia Kakwanzi and Martha Nkwanzi, as well as a family nurse Charles Otai and a househelp George Amanyire.
The case, now at its defence stage, is being heard by Lady Justice Rosette Comfort Kania of the High Court Criminal Division.
