The government made a loss of Rwf2.7 billion between 2007 and 2010, after losing corruption-related legal battles due to insufficient evidence from the prosecution, the Attorney General’s office has said.The Assistant Attorney General in charge of civil litigation service, Alphonse Sebazungu, pointed out that some of the cases involved former government officials.“On several occasions, courts did not find enough evidence against the suspects. Once prosecution loses the case, it renders us unable to pursue and recover the funds,” Sebazungu told The New Times in an exclusive interview yesterday.Most of these cases are related to breach of tendering procedures, a practice that is largely blamed for missing taxpayers’ money. Sebazungu urged district leaders and heads of other state institutions to play a vital role by providing timely informationon government funds which ought to be recovered.He added that investigations need to be conducted better and on time before prosecuting the suspects.However, the Spokesperson for the National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA), Alain Mukurarinda, dismissed the suggestion that the government loses cases due to insufficient evidence, arguing that they cannot drag a suspect to court without enough evidence.“You realise that we lost most of the cases at the appeals level and one cannot contest the decision of the judge because there is no higher level to petition,” Mukurarinda told The New Times yesterday.However, during a previous interview with this newspaper, in February, this year, on the faults highlighted in the 2009/2010 Auditor General’s report, Mukurarinda had admitted they were faced with challenges of a limited workforce to investigate cases and hand in their reports on time. At the time, he said NPPA had less than 10 people working on corruption cases. According to him, the prosecution had recovered Rwf 23.7 million in evaded taxes between 2007 and 2010.Meanwhile, Sebazungu said his office has filed compensation claims for damages involving 49 other cases it won in a bid to recover public funds.Citing a case involving the former RIAM Director General, Marc Kabandana, who was handed a five and a half year jail term for embezzling public funds and flouting tendering procedures, Sebazungu disclosed that 57 more court cases have been disposed of, some in the government’s favour, others against, and for which the state is yet to submit compensation claims.The state has won a number of cases, Sebazungu added, but it is difficult to recover the money using court bailiffs because “the losers always appeal against the verdicts to deliberately derail the process of executing court decisions”.In February, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the government was unable to recover embezzled taxpayers’ funds even for cases it had won.In one case cited by PAC, court bailiffs who were supposed to collect the money instead used it because nobody from government was available to keep it. Sebazungu,said yesterday that the Ministry of Justice was already in the process of setting up a unit to handle “abandoned property as well as asset recovery cases”.The New Times also understands that efforts are underway to enact a law that provides a clear legal framework under which the state will be able to recover funds when it has won court cases.
