Courts earned over Rwf 142m in charges

The 2009 Supreme Court report which The New Times has seen indicates that courts earned Rwf 142, 376,372 from all court charges countrywide. Gervais Twahirwa, the Director of Administration at the Supreme Court, said it reflected the courts performance and potential to contribute revenue to the national treasury. “We don’t wish people to be in courts, but in the previous years, there was no financial records and we did not know how much money is generated from court charges,” Twahirwa said yesterday by phone. He, however, added that despite the court having collected this amount of money, they could easily have collected as much as Rwf1.4 billion. “There was no proper means of collecting all court charges after verdicts have been rendered,” Twahirwa said, adding that a meeting was recently called to discuss how best to address the issue. He said that now Rwanda Revenue Authority will be making a follow up on persons ordered to pay any charges to the courts and that it would be done using bailiffs. on whether the new plan will help the government recover its funds from those found guilty of embezzling public funds, Twahirwa said that this will be eased by a law in the pipeline regarding recovery of such funds. He said once in force, the law will set modalities of how the properties of any official proven guilty of embezzling public funds will be attached by the government. The report indicates that Nyarugenge Intermediary Court earned the most revenues amounting to Rwf37.2m followed by Huye Intermediary Court which contributed Rwf 13.6m. Ends

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Courts earned over Rwf 142m in charges