By the end of 2015, every Rwandan will be financially enslaved to Paul Kagame’s tight grip on political power. Kagame intends to make sure that – when he falls -everyone falls with him. Directly or indirectly, everyone will be invested in financial products that have a direct exposure to political risk, with no good hedging options.
How can we avoid this sticky situation?
We all know who had access to liquidity in Rwanda so far:
1) The government that receives funds from taxes, foreign donors, and other lucrative activities through state owned enterprises (SOEs)
2) Crystal Venture derives funds from various SOEs it has been buying from the government in dubious privatization deals, mineral resources stolen from DRC using Kagame’s army, etc.
3) Pension funds, insurance companies, and banks that receive contributions/deposits/premiums from workers and business entrepreneurs. And churches that receives donations from the faithful.
Kagame’s junk bond issuance scheme aims at making sure that category no. 3 has no teeth left by the end of 2015. These institutions are forced to buy these junk bonds, therefore enslaving themselves to Kagame and benefiting category no. 2 above. If you run one of those financial institutions and you show signs of opposing terrible plan, he throws you go in jail or you get murdered.
(Refer to Kantengwa’s story for illustration).
Kagame is trying to fortify his dictatorship. He’s making sure that he makes it difficulty for everyone to oppose him when he decides to change the constitution so he can steal another dictatorial term. Kagame’s philosophy is that people have no political say when they have no access to cash. What he forgets is that people the revolution in Burkina Faso was not led by cash.
To put his evil plan in action, Kagame has been issuing toxic bonds ever other month. The latest Rwf 15 billion issue came this week, refer to this pubication. It followed a series of other issuances as featured in my earlier piece about keeping track of Kagame’s borrowing addiction. The latter is very informative and can be found here>>
Once again, by the end of 2015, Rwanda’s financial institutions will be quasi-fully invested in Kagame’s long-term junk bonds. They will have no liquidity left to invest in pockets of profit that are not dependent upon Kagame in order to hedge political risk
Bosco Mutarambirwa
