Mr Incorruptible Paul Kagame Is In “The Panama Papers” — Hold On To Your Seats!

dhimbara
3 min readApr 4, 2016

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Mr Incorruptible President Kagame

President Paul Kagame is named in the Panama Papers. The Panama Papers represent the latest leak of confidential documents. How much data has been leaked in the Panama Papers? A lot — the leak is said to be even larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010. The Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) that released the Panama Papers investigated 11.5 million documents and 2.6 terabytes of information.

We can say that a bombshell just dropped from the sky this Sunday, March 04, 2016 when the Panama Papers hit the news. Jaw-dropping “Panama Papers” show a global network of offshore companies helping the wealthy hide their assets.

So who are the secret accounts holders? There are all kinds of people, including a dozen current and former world leaders, businesspersons, criminals, celebrities as well as sports personalities.

According to the ICIJ, the data they examined span almost 40 years, from 1977 to the end of 2015. ICIJ says its investigations allows

“a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world — providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues.”

The Rwandan part features President Kagame, Emmanuel Ndahiro, and Hatari Sekoko.

Kagame, Sekoko, and Chinese businessmen
Ndahiro

Rwandan money trail is described as follows:

Rwanda Money Trail

“Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Ndahiro is a confidant of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, having served as the president’s physician, security adviser and spokesman.He also served as military spokesman when Kagame was minister of defense from 1994–2000. Ndahiro led Rwanda’s National Intelligence and Security Services from 2004–2011. In 2015, Kagame promoted him to brigadier general.

Emmanuel Ndahiro became a director of British Virgin Islands company Debden Investments Limited in September 1998, the same year in which Ndahiro regularly appeared in international news as a spokesman of the Rwandan army. Debden reportedly owned a jet aircraft. At the time of his appointment, Ndahiro’s listed address was a building in a commercial section of a West London neighborhood. Hatari Sekoko, a former soldier with the Rwandan Patriotic Front and now a major business executive, was the company’s owner. The company was deactivated in 2010.”

The directors of Debben were listed as follows:

What have we here? So what will Mr incorruptible Kagame do? In normal societies, something like this would cause a political crisis. This is what has just happened in Iceland. One of the more prominent names featured in the Panama Papers is that of Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. He is expected to call an election.

Do not expect Kagame to utter even one word.

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dhimbara

David Himbara is an educator, political economist, and author based in Toronto, Canada. He teaches and works in the field of development and competitiveness.