BALI - The Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone Stephen J. Rapp has blasted the pre-1994 Rwandan government leaders for their corrupt tendencies, which he said contributed to the Rwanda Genocide.

Rapp, who previously served as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), is among the officials and delegates from over one hundred countries attending the ongoing the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) conference in Bali, Indonesia.

"In the case of Rwanda, evidence pointed to a narrow group that controlled state power, and used to place its leading members at the head of parastital enterprises, where they could receive corrupt rewards,” Rapp told delegates.

He added: "When these leaders were threatened with the loss of this wealth in a civil war, and then by the implementation of a peace agreement that would have removed them from power, they sought to divert attention from themselves and their responsibility for the nation’s woes by blaming an ethnic minority for all the problems.”

About one thousand delegates from more than hundred countries have turned up for the week- long conference, which got underway on Monday.

Meanwhile, Rwanda, a signatory to the UNCAC, is among the African countries not represented at the high-level conference. Earlier, conference organisers said they were expecting a Rwandan delegation but until yesterday it hadn’t showed up in Bali.

When contacted yesterday, the Ombudsman Tito Rutaremara said he didn’t have details about the country’s representation at the conference.
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