The Rwandan government has denied any wrongdoing following the leaked ‘Panama Papers’ showing a senior intelligence official ran an offshore account in the late 1990s.
The papers indicated that Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Ndahiro, a confidant of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, having served as the president’s physician, security adviser and spokesman became a director of British Virgin Islands company Debden Investments Limited in September 1998.
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 neighbourhood.
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.
Responding to the revelations, Rwanda’s Finance Ministry said, “Debden Investments Ltd, an offshore company mentioned in the “Panama papers” was established in 1998, by the then transitional Government of Rwanda as a special purpose vehicle to secure strategic services, at a time when the Government was operating under very restrictive conditions.”
The statement seen by ChimpReports on Thursday further indicated that, “These services included the lease of a secure and convenient mode of transportation for Government leaders.”
Government emphasised that Debden Investments Ltd was used in “all transparency, and no private interests, illegal transactions or tax avoidance were involved in any form.”
The massive leak of ‘Panana Papers’ documents sheds light on the offshore holdings of dozens of current and former world leaders and also provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.
The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians among others.
These were among the findings of a yearlong investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations.