Rwanda: Authorities Continue Embezzling Public Funds with Impunity

Money disappeared, some was stolen; more went missing because tax laws were not properly enforced.

Paul Kagame photo courtesy: hpronline.org

(KIGALI, Rwanda) - Over 20 billion (20,000,000,000) Frw or $40 million US dollars have been embezzled from Rwanda national treasury. One gets these numbers by putting together figures and spreadsheets that were recently made public in a report written by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), a commission of the Rwandan legislative assembly, in charge of monitoring the utilization of public funds and assets.

The report which was presented to the legislative assembly on February 15, 2012 illustrates the bad stewardship of public funds and assets during the fiscal year 2009-2010.

This 59 page report gives an overwhelming account of embezzled public funds found in 104 institutions including ministries, projects and agencies among 315 institutions that were scheduled to be audited. That is only 33% of the total institutions that were scheduled to be audited.

It is quite obvious that this embezzled amount could have reached a prorated 60,000,000,000 FRW should all those institutions had been audited as planned.

This is an extraordinary fortune representing 3 times the budget appropriation to higher education for one year. That means that if public funds were managed conscientiously, the number of students attending college could increase at least three folds.

The report clearly shows mismanagement of public funds and assets. At fault are many things but hereafter are some of government’s wrongdoings:

Another 248,200,000 Frw in excess were paid on markets, 22,367,000 Frw of stolen high tech equipments, 25,860,000 Frw spent on non-existent projects (CDF), 7,889,065 Frw stolen from the Sector’s account, 1,100,000 Frw stolen from the vegetable growing project, 986,000 Frw stolen from cooperative project account. Among obstacles made public that make it hard to recover embezzled government funds there is the fact that: no presidential or ministerial decree has ever issued to establish how embezzled government funds should be recovered, the higher government finance inspection office has no authority to do real inspection on services, tyranny and despotism in market tendering, those who embezzle are simply transferred to other ministries or government agencies where they continue stealing with impunity. It has indeed come to our attention that there was a written report requesting a commission charged with tracking down properties without owners and government funds that were never accounted for by the government, so that they can be made public and acted upon. While other countries have dedicated agencies commissioned to recover debts, the current government of Rwanda continues to embezzle government funds with impunity.

Additionally, the report highlights wrongdoings in projects’ management: the above commission showed that there are problems in the conception of projects, their management, their monitoring and their promotion within the population mostly owing to the fact that the people who conceive these projects show clearly that the population will benefit from them but upon inception the government fails to thoroughly monitor these projects to make sure that they fulfill the assigned goals.

As mentioned above, this report is a small detail that distracts us from the bigger picture. The funds and assets that are embezzled and squandered are countless. One may wonder why the Ministries and government agencies that channel a lot of funds and most expensive equipment were not audited. They were not even on the list of institutions that were supposed to be audited. These include for instance, the Ministry of Defense and EWSA (Energy, Water and Sanitation Authority) mostly known as ELECTROGAZ.

The Rwandan Government has frequently claimed inside Rwanda and abroad to be corruption-free. Thus the Rwandan saying: “He who does not get into the King’s courtyard is told a lot of lies”.

Most of taxpayer’s money ends up in the pockets of Rwandan officials while that money is meant to improve the wellbeing of Rwandan citizens. Instead of putting more effort in recovering the embezzled funds, the government increased taxes for this year 2012. In some areas, taxes increased at least 4 times so that the population is completely desperate. It seems like the population is paying the price for government’s budget deficit due to embezzlement and mismanagement of public funds.

The party FDU-INKINGI requests that all ministries and institutions which have not been mentioned in the above report to be audited as soon as possible because the very few institutions that were audited showed overwhelming embezzlement. It is indeed shameful if embezzlement of public funds has become common practice in Rwanda. The party FDU-INKINGI requests that tax laws be based on taxpayer’s income. Ignoring this fact amounts to oppressing and smashing low income people.

The party FDU-INKINGI also requests the government to outline without delay the measures aimed at prosecuting, punishing and recovering embezzled public funds. We call upon all competent institutions to immediately prosecute the culprits of such embezzlement equally and fairly.

FDU-INKINGI
Boniface Twagirimana
Interim Vice President

Submitted and Edited by: Jennifer Fierberg, MSW Salem-News.com