Focus Media (Kigali)
27 November 2009
The past week has been quite an eventful one for the justice sector and on the anti corruption front in general.
Clockwise from top left: Theoneste Mutsindashyaka, Alexis Mugarura, Martin Ngoga, Claudine Nyinawagaga. (file photos)
In a couple of court cases that captured the attention of the Rwandan public for months and that have just come to a conclusion people who were thought to be untouchable have realized they too can be "touched" after all. Among these is Theoneste Mutsindashyaka who is in jail.
Unfortunately our prosecution services have shown they are full of individuals who aren't capable of much analytical thought in that they are as likely as not to have innocent people locked up. The judges too have displayed a tendency to be differential to prosecutors (with the exception of one Claudene Nyiramikenke).
In the same week, the Gasabo High Instance Court unconditionally released former Cepex director George Katurebe who has been standing trial while in prison on suspicion that he conspired with former Ministry of Infrastructure Permanent Secretary Vincent Gatwabuyenge to cause government financial loss.
The Rwanda Focus reported in June, a few months after Katurebe's arrest, that the man was innocent of the charge against him.
Prosecutors claimed a document called the protocole d'accord de conciliation signed by Gatwabuyenge and Katurebe and representatives of Strabag, a German road construction firm was a contract that Strabag could use to demand pay, and that it exonerated the firm of paying a hefty fine to government due to delayed completion of the Kicukiro-Bugesera-Mayange road.
The protocol did no such things. Rather it was the minutes of a meeting between the two parties: the Government of Rwanda (represented in negotiations by Katurebe and Gatwabuyenge), and Strabag.
The meeting took place after Strabag almost walked out of the country without completing work on the road due to constant breach of contract by Rwanda Government bureaucrats with their habit of taking lengthy delays to disburse pay as agreed. (We rerun that story on page 10 of this issue ).
Gatwabuyenge is implicated in so many corruption cases that it is almost impossible to convince anyone the man can sign a document without nefarious intentions. Yet in this particular case even he was innocent.
The question many were asking after Katurebe's release was, what is Prosecution going to pay the man for having him locked up for 10 months yet it was immediately apparent that the charge against him was false?
Members of the public are asking: what do you compensate someone innocent for subjecting him to the trauma of a prison term? For ruining his name? For causing him the loss of a job, of his respect?
Another person asking the same questions is Charles Kasana.
The Kacyiru Lower Instance Court declared the former executive secretary of Eastern Province innocent of any complicity in causing financial loss to the government in a tender scam involving gross over-invoicing of the government for construction work on a new headquarters for the province.
It turns out Kasana did not sign the contract with the builder Entreprise Mugarura Alexis (EMA) but it was Mutsindashyaka the governor, yet it was not Mutsindashyaka's job to sign it. Still Prosecution somehow decided Kasana was a suspect and had him locked up.
Prosecution, it was apparent, was doing all it could to save Mutsindashyaka from a court appearance.
Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga was in every media in August proclaiming the innocence of Mutsindashyaka so that people began asking themselves why a representative of the law was trying to fight a case in the media that was in court, a case in which, strangely, the man on whose behalf he was fighting had yet to be summoned.
Judge Claudine Nyiramikenke of the Kacyiru Lower Instance Court was not impressed by Ngoga's acts however and she managed to drag Mutsindashyaka to court from where, after a months-long trial she has handed him a one year jail term.
But even as the judge was reading the man's sentence Police had already jailed Mutsindashyaka three days before.
They arrested him late in the evening of last Tuesday and locked him up in Kicukiro police jail on suspicion of concealing the full extent of his wealth, including assets that are yet to be made public and accounts in foreign-based banks.
The Rwanda Focus has it on good sources that the former governor of Eastern Province who has held various posts including Mayor of Kigali and junior minister in the cabinet has 40 houses and plots of land in Kigali alone, most of them registered in the names of his relatives, wife's relatives and friends.
In the Eastern Province tender case the Kacyiru Lower Instance Court found Mutsindashyaka guilty of flouting tendering rules by among other things signing the contract for construction of the provincial headquarters when that was the executive secretary's job, and for notifying Alexis Mugarura of EMA that his firm had been awarded the contract a month before the winner was to be announced.
It is the culmination of the trial of individuals in the Eastern Province tender scandal, a trial that has seen probable perpetrators of scams tried side by side with innocents.
Among the guilty in that case:
Vincent Gatwabuyenge who gets four years for circumventing tendering procedures (this is in addition to a three-year term the Gasabo court handed him the day it released Katurebe).
Alexis Mugarura who overbilled the government Frw 1.4 billion in cahoots with Mutsindashyaka and John Wilson Sekaziga, owner of Intertech the consultancy firm hired to monitor construction work on the project. Mugarura and Sekaziga each get four years in prison. Each of the guilty parties will also pay court a fine of Frw 500,000. The court also orders all those convicted to pay a total of Frw 300 million for the loss they caused the Government.
Innocent individuals who stood trial in the case were Marie Claire Mukasine the Mininfra permanent secretary, and mid-level civil servants and Eastern Province officials among them Jean Habyarimana, Honore Munyanshongore, Yvonne Nyiramasengesho, Eliab Munyemana, Augustine Hategeka, Ishaka Habimana, Alex Karani and Jean Makombe.
Nyinawagaga resigns. Five Gasabo District officials still in jail.
According to former Gasabo District Mayor Claudine Nyinawagaga who recently resigned that post, she did so for personal reasons. But Kigali City Mayor Aisa Kirabo Kakira has ferociously attacked Nyinawagaga saying the woman lost her job because she was totally incompetent and couldn't fulfill her responsibilities.
A senior policeman who talked to The Rwanda Focus on the condition of anonymity said Police is investigating Nyinawagaga for her possible role in overpaying by a large sum businessman Eugene Bavukiyehe who won a tender to supply foodstuffs, cooking oils and firewood to Remera prison for a period of 3 months last year.
According to the contract the District was to pay Bavukiyehe a total of Frw 68,818,300 for the goods. But Gasabo ended up paying the businessman Frw 222,000,000. A recent audit unearthed this fact.
Nyinawagaga, as the audit was ongoing, decided to use our so called prosecution services to begin locking up people. Among these:
The Executive Secretary Felix Kabandana.
Ferdinand Rwigema, a procurement officer.
Armandin Musirikare who is the Gasabo District in-charge of cooperatives and a member of the tender committee.
Germaine Habineza the District's human resources manager who also is a member of the tender committee, and Georgette Umubyeyi another member of the committee.
A couple of other officials of Gasabo District are on the run after realizing Nyinawagaga was determined to have everyone locked up in a bid to deflect blame from herself.
Everyone is saying: "Since it is Nyinawagaga who signed the tender with Bavukiyehe, why am I being locked up?"
The Rwanda Focus has a copy of the contract. There are two signatures on it - Bavukiyehe's and Nyinawagaga's.
Eugene Bavukiyehe is nowhere to be found.
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