At the Mandela Cup in Durban, South Africa in April 2024, five Ugandan boxers posed with dummy cheques, three were entitled to prize money, and only one seems to have received it. But no one tells why.
Erina Namutebi (63kg), who got silver in Durban, was entitled to $3000, while bronze medalists Fatuma Nabikolo (54kg) and Ukasha Matovu (67kg) expected $1500 each.
Sharua Ndagire and Emily Nakalema also got bronze but, despite posing with dummy cheques, were not entitled to prize money because both got byes to the semifinals but won no single bout at the tournament.
IBA-the International Boxing Association-sent the money to medallists of different countries in June 2024, using Convera, a global leader in foreign exchange products and services and payment solutions, based in Zurich, Switzerland. Boxers in other countries received their due by the latest August 2024.
But 16 months later, two Ugandan boxers are still waiting for their due, with faint hope.
At first, the delay was normal. For instance, bronze medallists Jona Kyobe and Yusuf Nkobeza waited six months before receiving $2500 each, for their medals at the 2022 Africa Boxing Confederations Championship in Maputo, Mozambique. After the 2023 African Championship in Yaounde, Cameroon, Matovu and others waited for 10 months to receive their money. So, the Mandela Cup prize money delay was normal until word spread that medallists in other countries had received their due.
‘When we asked about the money, the federation (UBF) said it must be on our accounts already. They asked for our bank statements. I sent mine around December last year,’ one boxer told us. A year later, the money has not come.
When the boxers resurrected the money demands in 2025, UBF, through the boxers’ coaches, sent documents showing proof that Convera had wired their money to their respective bank accounts.
Surprisingly, these documents show that the payments were made in July 2024 but the UBF released the same documents around August 2025.
‘When I took the document to the bank, they told me the transfer did not happen,’ one boxer told Daily Monitor. ‘But the coach said that the federation insists the money was sent to my account,’ another boxer said.
But if these electronic funds transfer (EFT) documents were legit why didn’t Centenary Bank receive the money?
The inconsistencies
We have three documents (let us name them A, B and C), for the three boxers. Documents A and B, whose authenticity is doubted, look similar, except in the few personal details. Each was supposed to transfer $1500 (about Shs5.2m) to the recipient’s account. But both documents had striking differences from the seemingly authentic document C-whose recipient was entitled to $3000 (about Shs10.4m).
Consider these comparisons: Documents A and B are single-paged while document C has three pages marked: 1 of 3, 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 at the right bottom corner. Strangely, despite being single-paged, document A is marked Page 25 of 55 and B is marked Page 51 of 55. So, where are the other pages?
Document C has an order commit date and time of June 8, 2024 at 11:45:43 and an expected release date of July 22, 2024.
Documents A and B only have an order commit date and time of July 22, 2024 at 08:12:17 and no expected release date.
Moreover, an expert banker told us, it is strange for two documents to be printed at the same hour, minute, seconds.
The transfer detailed in document C went to Post Bank, whose name was spelt correctly and in uppercase. Document A and B were directed to ‘Centeniary Bank, Kalerae, Kampala (Instead of ‘Centenary Bank, Kalerwe, Kampala.)
Document C encrypts the recipient’s account number as XXXXXXXXX2144-a standard practice in money transfer business-but documents A and B reveal all the 10 digits of the recipient’s account number.
The discrepancies continue. The confirmation number on document C is ZOTR3291842R4 while documents A and B share a confirmation number: ZOTR3291842. Document C’s item number: ZOTR3291842R4-1 is unique compared to document A’s ZOTR3291842-6 and B’s ZOTR3291842-32.
If all three documents are authentic and from the same source, why is C completely different?
Seeking clarity
To find answers on behalf of the boxers, we wrote to Convera on October 4, 2025.
‘Could you please confirm if the payment was processed successfully? If so, could you provide an update on its status and any additional info that might help track the payment?’ our email reads in part.
‘Dear Abdul-Nasser, Thank you for your message. However, we cannot advise you further on these payments in question as you are not an authorized user on this account. We will forward your query to our customer International boxing association IBA and suggest you contact them as well. Please reply to this email if you need anything further at this time,’ Convera Customer Care wrote back on October 7.
One boxer also sought Convera’s help through email. ‘The purpose of this letter is to follow up on the document I received indicating that your company wired 5,211,953.00UGX (1500.00 USD) to my Centenary Bank account on July 22, 2024,’ the complainant wrote.
‘The money was a prize from the International Boxing Association (IBA) for my bronze medal achievement at the Mandela Cup tournament in April 2024. Unfortunately, 14 months after July 2024, I have never received the money in my account and neither has it reflected on my bank statement.’
The complaint continued: ‘More so, I only received the transfer document in August 2025. This has made me suspect the document is fake. That’s why I kindly urgently need your clarification on these issues: is this document legit for your company? If so, why did it take over a year to reach me? Why is the money not reflected on my bank statement? If it’s not [legit], to whose account did you send my money and when did you send it? Because [other] boxers in Uganda and other countries got their money as early as last year.I badly need your help. Thanks.’
To ease Convera’s verification process, the complainant attached the money transfer document in question and the bank statement capturing transactions from April 2, 2024 to June 24, 2025.
Convera’s reply to the complainant, on October 13, was exactly the same as the one it sent us when we inquired, with the same empty promise: ‘We will forward your query to our customer International boxing association IBA and suggest you contact them as well.’ But two months later, Convera has not updated the complainant on IBA’s response to the query.
Besides, the manager of one of the complaining boxers said he wrote to IBA twice before we engaged Convera but both attempts met frustrating silence.
‘Dear Mr. Roberts and the IBA Team, I hope this message finds you well. Am writing regarding Mandela Africa boxing cup 2024 in Durban, especially to request confirmation and distribution of $500,000 event prize fund reportedly allocated for the competition,’ partly reads the email to IBA secretary general and CEO Chris Roberts OBE in July 2025. (We saw a screenshot of the email).
‘I have noticed and investigated that most boxers who won medals received their prizes accordingly except Ugandan boxers who haven’t got theirs. I have talked to them personally and they have never received any a penny.
‘Kindly: Confirmation [sic] of prize money distribution; how the funds were distributed to federations and boxers (e.g bank transfers, time lines); any available documentation or links to official pay out summaries.
He concluded: ‘This information will greatly assist transparency and benefit the boxing community.’
The manager said after his first time reaching out, UBF started telling the boxers that their moneys had been wired to their bank accounts. But the boxers did not see any money.
The manager, also a boxing trainer based in the UK, said he wrote again, this time to the IBA president Umar Kremlev, on September 9, 2025. Again, he got no answer.
The manager suspects ‘Muhangi knows something but he’s friends with IBA president.’ Muhangi has hosted Kremlev in Kampala twice since 2022.
Muhangi: boxers are lying
UBF president Moses Muhangi said all boxers got their money. He is half-right. Silver medallist Namutebi received Shs10.4m ($3000) on her account Post Bank (now Pearl Bank) account on August 7, 2024, though she did not know that was her due from Mandela Cup until her manager sent her the Convera EFT document around August 2025, after she had even invested the money. Still, she remitted the federation’s 30 percent.
Last year, Namutebi gave Shs11m to UBF off her Shs34m ($10,000) as prize money for her silver medal at the 2023 African Championship in Yaounde. But Matovu and Nabikolo did not receive their combined $3000 for the Mandela Cup.
In March 2023, Muhangi delivered Kyobe’s and Nkobeza’s $2500 each in bundles of Shs5000 bank notes packed in two briefcases in a ceremony covered by the press.
‘By then the money was sent to federation accounts. But IBA resorted to wiring it directly to boxers’ accounts because some federations swindled the boxers’ money,’ Muhangi told us on November 23 on the phone.
‘So, IBA paid [the Mandela Cup money] a long time ago and we have been demanding the boxers of the 30 percent cut for the federation but they denied receiving the money. That’s when I contacted IBA, who sent me those documents as proof of payment,’ Muhangi explained why the boxers received the payment documents over a year later, moreover through UBF.
But why would boxers, who still need international assignments, deny getting the money when they actually got it? ‘They just don’t want to pay the federation’s percentage,’ Muhangi insisted.
He equated them to Wasswa Ssali, who last year received $10,000 (Shs34m) for his silver medal at the 2023 continental championship in Yaoundé but refused to remit to the federation. But Wasswa never denied receiving the money. Matovu had also just remitted Shs3m to UBF out of the $5,000 (Shs17m) for his bronze in Yaoundé. Why then would he lie about $1500 (Shs5.2m)?
Muhangi also said the 30 percent is mandatory according to IBA. But it was not. IBA just introduced the 25 percent for the federation at the just-concluded world championship in Dubai.
On when he contacted IBA, Muhangi said, ‘It’s a long time ago. I don’t remember.’ Asked for proof, such as screenshots of the emails or WhatsApp chats with IBA, he said: ‘Not that I officially wrote to IBA. These were private chats with maybe someone in finance and they sent me the documents.’
On why he shared documents with glaring inconsistencies, Muhangi said: ‘Come on! You mean the federation is an expert at scrutinising such documents? And we had no interest. I just forwarded them as they came.’
But you don’t need to be an expert to see that one document has three pages while the others from the same sender for the same purpose are single-paged. And since UBF expects 30 percent off each boxer’s payment, wasn’t it enough interest to do just a basic check?
‘When we forwarded those payment forms, the one who got the money remitted the 30 percent to the federation. We told the two who denied getting the money to bring their bank statements so that we can pick up the process from there. None of them submitted their bank statements until today. So, how could we know the truth when they refused to submit their bank statements?’
But the boxers said the federation already has their statements. ‘I told you I sent them my bank statement in December [2024] and even after they sent us the fake transfer documents this year. But nothing changed,’ one boxer said. ‘The coach told me to stop chasing the money,’ another said.
But on why Muhangi insists on bank statements now, yet he said he got the EFTs through informal communication with IBA, he ended the conversation.
However, questions still linger: if Namutebi got her money via Convera, what happened to Matovu’s and Nabikolo’s dues? Why is Namutebi’s document different if all allegedly came from Convera? And, Namutebi’s money reached her Post Bank account on August 7, 2024-16 days after the expected release date of July 22, 2024. Could that delay have allowed a devious hand to intercept Convera’s transactions with the two Centenary Bank clients? And why did IBA ignore the complainant’s query?
BRIEFLY
Namutebi, $3000 (Shs10.4m), for silver, RECEIVED
Matovu: $1500 (Shs5.2m), for bronze, NOT RECEIVED
Nabikolo: $1500 (Shs5.2m), for bronze, NOT RECEIVED