IBUKA Mémoire et Justice ASBL”, The Belgian entity, will appear before the Commercial Court of Brussels, this Thursday, December 9, 2021, at 2:00 p.m., in the context of a dissolution procedure initiated for non-filing of its annual accounts.
According to several corroborating sources, the administrators of IBUKA-Belgium have not filed the association’s annual accounts, required by law, for at least three years. The association faces dissolution while, if necessary, the directors could be prosecuted in the event of financial fraud and / or embezzlement.
IBUKA-Belgium, which is subsidized by several Belgian public entities, is required to file its annual accounts each year.
On September 16, 2021, the non-profit organization was called for the first time in front of the Court, but the hearing was then postponed to November 4, 2021.
During the second hearing, on November 4, 2021, IBUKA-Belgium requested a postponement of the hearing arguing that the chartered accountant appointed to examine the association’s accounts had still not received the bank statements of 2018, 2019 and 2020 “despite repeated requests from Maître Maingain to the BNP Paribas Fortis agency in Meiser and Kigali. “
The postponement was accepted, and it is in this context that a third hearing was set for Thursday, December 9 at 2:00 p.m.
Represented by Me Bernard Maingain, the lawyer who also defends the interests of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (ruling party in Rwanda) and of President Paul Kagame in Europe, IBUKA-Belgium will not be able to escape a third time and will have to demonstrate that its accounts have been correctly managed, and in addition, will have to give a valid reason for having failed in its obligation to file the legally required documentation of the accounts throughout all these years.
However, several sources indicate that the current management team, led by Félicité Lyamukuru, has always been unable to explain certain financial movements, both of its Belgian account and of its Rwandan account, to the point that suspicions of financial fraud, even embezzlement, started to rise among the members.
Indeed, between 2018 and 2020, IBUKA-Belgium would have received several hundreds of thousands of euros in subsidies in order to carry out projects, in particular within the framework of the 25th commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi. But in view of the quality of what was finally achieved, doubts about the proper use of the subsidies rose up among the members.
Precisely, it was a documentary [1] containing the testimonies of survivors and of those who saved lives in 1994 and known as “les Justes”, which would have been financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation as well as the erection of a stele in memory of the victims of the genocide against Tutsi.
According to « Le Vif l’Express »[2], 2000 copies of the book « Quand l’histoire s’écrit à la machette » for which the non-profit organization had been subsidized, had also been destroyed in 2019, following a veto by President Félicité Lyamukuru on certain parts of the book.
Since 2018, several administrators have resigned from their positions, including Honoré Magorane, Vincent Depaigne and Aloys Kabanda, practically leaving the association in the hands of its President, Félicité Lyamukuru.
The latter is regularly criticized internally for her propensity to confuse “the positions of Ibuka with the positions of the Rwandan authorities” and to propagate, under the cover of an association registered in Belgium, the political ideology of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
According to the Africa journalist of the newspaper La Libre Belgique, Marie-France Cros: “Since 1998, it is thus the government which chooses the president of Ibuka-Rwanda. The association has since been much less critical of power. »[3]
Since the start of her mandate, Félicité Lyamukuru has indeed appeared very regularly in interviews attacking political opponents of the Rwandan regime such as Victoire Ingabire and Paul Rusesabagina[4], as well as to associations critical of the Kigali regime such as Jambo ASBL and even to associations specifically defending the interests of survivors of the Tutsi genocide, from the moment they want to be independent of the RPF, such as “Igicumbi – the voice of the survivors of the Tutsi genocide ”recently created in Belgium.[5]
In several other interventions [6], we can still hear her defending the disastrous record of the Rwandan regime in terms of human rights violations, including when it is the fundamental rights of survivors of the Tutsi genocide that are violated, as was the case when Kizito Mihigo was assassinated in February 2020[7].
Regarding the ongoing proceedings before the Commercial Court of Brussels, if the administrators of IBUKA-Belgium manage to put the accounts in order by December 9, 2021, the hearing could lead to a simple warning in best cases, or to a judicial supervision for a few years.
Otherwise, the non-profit organization would simply be dissolved.
This would be a completely unexpected end for the most known and oldest association of Tutsi genocide survivors, created precisely on August 16, 1994, just a few weeks after the end of the genocide.
Emmanuel Hakuzwimana
Jambonews.net
To read also:
[1] Le documentaire “Nés pendant les jours sombres” réalisé par le André Bossuroy pour le compte d’Ibuka Belgique a depuis lors été supprimé de toutes les plateforme internet pour des raisons inexpliquées par l’association
[2] https://www.levif.be/actualite/international/genocide-rwandais-du-rififi-chez-ibuka/article-normal-1113549.html
[3] https://www.lalibre.be/international/2011/02/09/linquietude-des-rescapes-du-genocide-rwandais-QF4N2KOVPVBHPCRRDRDEVOBTKI/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saJLbRMrgEc&t=1494s
[5] https://www.jambonews.net/actualites/20210820-rwanda-naissance-dune-nouvelle-association-de-rescapes-du-genocide-des-tutsi/
[6] Voir entre autres les nombreuses interventions de Félicité Lyamukuru faites entre mai 2020 et novembre 2021, sur la chaine extremiste Youtuve « One Nation Radio » https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt73TdW3wO1PSBDuH-QMxkQ/videos
[7] https://www.hrw.org/fr/news/2021/03/08/appel-une-enquete-independante-sur-la-mort-du-chanteur-rwandais-kizito-mihigo
