Kigali — The Rwanda Focus is in possession of a copy of a letter from Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama to Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga expressing the worries of the Public Ombudsman (Impungenge z'Umuvunyi Mukuru).

The letter, dated 02 October 2009 bases on an earlier letter from the Ombudsman (written on 28 September 2009) to the Justice Minister and expresses those worries as follows: that certain suspect criminal offences that the Prosecutor General should have taken to court never were prosecuted in any court.

The Justice Minister enumerates these offences in the following way:

1) Awarding a tender to Jean de dieu Karangira and his associates to repair the road of Mudasomwa (Gasarenda)-Gisovu irregularly and also the job never was done. (The Rwanda Focus here can state that the Justice Minister may have forgotten that Karangira and his friends were awarded the said tender to repair two, not one road and the other road is Butare-Kibeho-Muse).

2) Paying BCE Contractors (Karangira's ghost company) through an account that wasn't stated in the contract with Mininfra.

3) The Mininfra permanent secretary (at the time Vincent Gatwabuyenge) deciding to sign money away to BCE Contractors without first verifying whether they have the requisite equipment.

4) Not bringing to book the board of directors of the Rwanda Public Procurement Authority for irregularly awarding the road repair tender.

If you have been reading this newspaper you will remember that this is a case we have reported on long and diligently.

We have always asked ourselves in the course of reporting on this stinky contract why it is that the principle actors in the awarding of the tender, namely RPPA Executive Secretary Augustus Seminega and the institution's board chairman Damien Mugabo have never faced a court to answer questions.

We are glad, and we feel vindicated that even the Justice Minister is asking the same questions.

The person to do the explaining, as is obvious and as the Justice Minister indicates in his letter, is the Prosecutor General.

Martin Ngoga has been astonishingly silent on the massive rip-off to the taxpayer that was the tender award to BCE Contractors. The tax payer sustained a loss in that particular scam of slightly over Rwf 4 billion.

Ngoga is in the habit of sending people to jail on suspicion of much lesser offences. So what is the deal on RPPA top brass? Are they sacred cows that cannot be touched?

There is a disturbing trend on the part of the Prosecutor General of appearing to be a player in some of the more grievous acts of office abuse and it was no different with the tender on the roads.

In issue no. 88 of The Rwanda Focus of August 3 to 9 we ran a story headlined "Big appetites at Public Procurement Authority" in which we stated that Ngoga facilitated an out of court agreement between Karangira and his associate in BCE Contractors Felicien Munyaneza when the latter discovered that Karangira was diverting over Frw 738 million to a private account in BCR.

We asked, and we still ask: since this was public money, what was Ngoga one of the highest representatives of the law in the land doing facilitating an out of court agreement between suspect thieves one of who was diverting the money to his personal account? The proper response should have been to arrest both, so what was the Prosecutor General up to?

Given this and other facts like this we suspect there are some shady reasons why he is not prosecuting RPPA people.