By The Rwandan Analyst
Rwanda, like the majority of the countries, has enacted a new law n° 74/2019 of 29/01/2020 establishing the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) allegedly to counter money-laundering, the financing of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as well as related crimes. What are the real reasons of officiating the undue and unlawful interference in citizens accounts to which Rwandan intelligence agents have been long resorting? The lines below assess the unacknowledged reasons for this initiative.
Official rationale of the creation of the FIC
The Financial Intelligence Centre has come into being to strengthen and protect the economy and particularly the financial integrity of the country. The FIC is likely to mitigate financial threats triggered by transnational organized crimes. As noted recently in this column, money-laundering and the financing of terrorism are the two main crimes committed in finance-related area. However, I don’t wish to seem like downplaying financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Specifically, what’s the mandate of the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) under the new law? Under Article 4 of the aforesaid law, FIC has a legal personality and enjoys administrative, financial and human resource management autonomy. In other words, it has rights and obligations to exercise in the eyes of the law. FIC is independent, and shall not take injunctions from any other agency. According to Article 8 of the same law, FIC is responsible, among others, for carrying out operational and strategic analysis of received suspicious transaction reports, disseminating the results to relevant authorities and coordinating preventive activities carried out by all institutions in relation to the implementation of the law relating to the prevention and punishment of money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Establishing FIC is in the light of frameworks based on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Commonwealth guidelines and the Egmont Group guidelines. In particular, the Financial Action Task Force is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 by the Ministers of its Member jurisdictions. The mandate of the FATF is to set standards and to promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of proliferation, and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
The FATF recommends member states and non-member states to establish competent authorities for receiving and processing suspicious transaction reports. In many countries around the world, such authority is popularly known as Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). FIC is principally expected to investigate and receive suspicious or currency transactions above a certain limit; give instructions to financial institutions; have a computerized database, have compliance control and supervision powers, and regulatory powers; issue guidelines; carry out international information exchange, and freeze and seize suspicious property or funds.
It is noteworthy that FIC isn’t part of law enforcement agencies as its principal mandate is to collect information on suspicious or unusual financial activity from the financial industry and other entities or professions and required to report transactions suspected of being money laundering or terrorism financing to relevant law enforcement authorities.
In other words, FIC’s mission is to process and analyse the information received. If sufficient evidence of unlawful activity is found, the matter is passed to Rwanda Investigative Bureau (RIB). Establishing FIC is tremendous progress in the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. What about the financing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction?
By definition, the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) is the transfer and export of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, their means of delivery and related materials. The issue of proliferation received international attention for several years.
A number of international conventions provide for measures to detect and prohibit proliferation, especially with regard to nuclear materials (such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). These treaties do not, however, consider the aspect of financing proliferation. In 2004, the UN Security Council issued Resolution 1540, requiring UN member states to put in place a number of measures in order to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. In this regard, the FATF started in 2007 to consider the threats related to proliferation financing and its interconnection with terrorism and terrorism financing. Similarly, the Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction, commonly referred to as (“the Chemical Weapons Convention”), aims at eliminating an entire category of weapons of mass destruction by States Parties.
States Parties are under obligation to take steps necessary to enforce that prohibition in respect of persons within their jurisdiction.
As a signatory to both the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (ratified on 17 October 2003) and the African Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone Treaty (ratified on 28 December 2004), Rwanda commits to put in place to legal measures concerning the prevention, suppression and disruption of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and its financing.
There’s an interconnection between financing terrorism and financing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction based on the fact that proliferation might be a means for supporting the undertaking of terrorist activities. Its disruption is therefore essential for the prevention of terrorist acts. Moreover, the practical undertaking of proliferation financing often uses the same channels as terrorist financing.
Analysis: from appearance to real mobiles
-A practice already informally carried out
There was often reported that during the covid-19 lockdown, intelligence agents accessed all bank accounts on which were deposited huge amounts. The owners of the money were identified and some sums were withdrawn and used for the regime purposes so that any of those people could not access such accounts without prior authorization of the headquarters of RPF where they were compelled to resort and be subjugated to an interrogation on the sources of those amounts. As outstanding illustrations, apart from the publicized reasons, advocates named Nzamwita Toy and Mutunzi Donat were assassinated by the regime because they were obviously rich without any justification; that they did not integrate the regime into their attractive business and that those funds probably came from the political opposition living abroad.
Indeed, Me Toy possessed pharaminous sums on his bank accounts, a storey house and was driving a v8 jeep. Me Mutunzi Donat possessed large sums of currency, many villas and floors in Kigali city and in the countryside without forgetting the large lands in the eastern province where he is a native and angering the officials of the regime who squatted them from the local poor population without compensation.
-Reasons behind the creation of the center
It goes without saying then that the creation of such a center serves to formalize what was plotted in hiding and which often caused unacknowledged deaths where the regime claimed that the victims committed suicide or escaped traffic control as if the police ignore the law to the point of killing a driver who does not stop his vehicle while they can easily identify his license plate. Moreover, they will be able to know where the funds come from, especially those sent by parents living abroad and who are in opposition to the regime; they will know the rich people to whom they will turn to finance their projects. Thus, it is known that the private institutions are obliged to pay sums of need and those which refuse are deprived of the advantages which the state can grant them. In this context, Mr. Urayeneza Gerard is jailed for life for the sole fact that he did not want to share his millions that the regime detected on his various bank accounts. Sina Gerard who had conceded only 3 million to Agaciro Developement Fund while the regime knows his wealth had been deprived of his clients at Nyirangarama where the road police placed the traffic signs of no stop and when he increased the sum everything was decanted and he obtained the contract to supply the prisons with provisions. Under which law did they access the bank account of Karasira Aimable now detained for among areas illicit enrichment? The sum he possesses is qualified as illicit enrichment just because among donors they are people belonging to political opposition.
Conclusion
The creation of such a center will address some challenges encountered by Rwandan judicial institutions and the office of ombudsman to ascertain declarations of civil servants who often declare what is on their accounts or property they possess inside the country while really, they dispatched their monies worldwide or behind other names. However, this center risks to trigger financial insecurity of Rwandan citizens because when the regime is aware of what you possess, your private life is threatened and your resistance to involve them in your business entails your death.
