KIGALI - An employee of the Social Security Fund of Rwanda (SSFR) is on the run for fraud after he created ghost employees with intentions of benefiting from their ‘retirement’ benefits, The New Times has learnt.

Jean Paul Mutabazi who has been a Pensions Officer at the Gatsibo office is currently being sought by Police after it was discovered he was attempting to defraud the fund by creating ghost pensioners with intentions of taking their retirements benefits.

Earlier information obtained by The New Times indicates that the individual had successfully managed to obtain a huge amount of money, thought to be Rwf18m in a lump sum, supposed to be pension for retired ghost worker, but the allegations were strongly denied by the fund.

"All I can say is that he (Mutabazi) managed to fraudulently acquire Rwf.1.8m in the 1st Quarter (Jan-March 2009) what I would say was his pilot project, to test whether he could really succeed, but we managed to discover early as he was planning to steal large sums in the 2nd Quarter (June-Sept)” revealed Rehema Karegeya, the Director of Quality assurance and internal audit at SSFR.

According to Karegeya, Mutabazi attempted to create more ghost workers after the success of his first attempt by creating more fictitious pension beneficiaries and filed their pension forms into the funds payment system.

He was however busted in the process of forging physical files, as the pension payment procedure requires but he managed to disappear and abandoned his job, prompting the fund to hand over his case to police.

"Usually Investigators of Benefits from the Internal Audit department carefully study the physical files to verify the information provided before any payments are done, so we found out he created several files but failed to provide physical ones” Karegeya said in an interview.

One of the four files seen by The New Times submitted by Mutabazi supposed to be paid in the 2nd Quarter has a sum of Rwf2.8m while the others were still blank. He was busted before he could complete his mission.

The Police Spokesperson John Uwamungu confirmed that Police is indeed looking for the suspected fraudster who has since not returned to his workplace.

"We have received a letter from the Social Security Fund requesting us to look out for this suspect, at the moment that’s all I can tell you until we will find him” Uwamungu said.

Earlier information obtained by The New Times indicates that Mutabazi operates in a racket of 3, highly sophisticated computer fraudsters who have successfully managed to defraud several institutions out of millions of money but neither the Police nor the Social Security Fund could confirm the allegations.

In an Interview with The New Times, the Managing Director of the Social Security Fund Henry Gaperi said the Fund is an easy target of fraudsters because of the huge sums of payments it makes, but many have been discovered and consequently detained.

"The department of quality assurance and internal audit is always on the lookout for such cases and all I can tell the public is that such cases cannot go unnoticed, we discover them when it is still early and act upon them” Gaperi said.
 
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