{"id":33709,"date":"2017-06-29T12:28:15","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/33709-french-bank-bnp-accused-of-complicity-in-rwanda-genocide.html"},"modified":"2017-06-29T12:28:15","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:28:15","slug":"french-bank-bnp-accused-of-complicity-in-rwanda-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/33709-french-bank-bnp-accused-of-complicity-in-rwanda-genocide.html","title":{"rendered":"French bank BNP accused of \u201ccomplicity\u201d in Rwanda genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Three non-governmental organizations on Thursday filed a lawsuit against French bank BNP Paribas for \u201ccomplicity in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes\u201d, they announced.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Anti-corruption\u00a0group Sherpa, the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) and Ibuka\u00a0France accuse BNP Paribas of having knowingly enabled the former Rwandan government to buy arms in the midst of the genocide and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. According to their press release, the three NGOs accuse the French bank of transferring \u201c1.3 million dollars held by its client the National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) to the Swiss account of a South African arms dealer\u201d, Willem Tertius Ehlers, in June 1994.<\/p>\n<p>They allege that this South African intermediary went with Rwandan army colonel Th\u00e9oneste Bagosora to the Seychelles and reached agreement on June 17, 1994, on the sale of 80 tonnes of arms, which were then delivered to Gisenyi in western Rwanda via Goma (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, then called Zaire).<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Th\u00e9oneste Bagosora was chief of staff in the Ministry of Defence. During his testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Bagosora confirmed that arms arriving from the Seychelles via Goma had given Kigali \u201ca helping hand\u201d, according to the NGO communiqu\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>Bagosora, whom the prosecution presented as the \u201cbrains\u201d behind the genocide, was sentenced to 35 years in jail, which he is currently serving in a Malian prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The three NGOs says that Banque Bruxelles Lambert (BBL), a Belgian bank, was also approached by the Rwandan government but turned down its request, for fear of breaking the UN embargo. BNP was the only bank that agreed to this transfer of funds, they say, even though the French bank knew it could contribute to the genocide that was taking place against Tutsis in Rwanda.<\/p>\n<h3>A first in France<\/h3>\n<p>A spokesman for BNP Paribas told French news agency AFP it could not comment on the claims, saying it did not yet have \"sufficient details\". This is the first time in France that a bank has been accused of complicity in such serious crimes. \u201cThe preventive aspect of financial institutions\u2019 duty to remain vigilant, as adopted on February 21 this year, should help avoid their involvement in such violations,\u201d said Sherpa\u2019s programme director Sandra Cossart, as quoted in the communiqu\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit was filed the day after the \u201cXXI\u201d magazine published a report containing damning new allegations about France\u2019s role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It accuses the French authorities of having knowingly rearmed the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) in July 1994, in violation of the UN arms embargo.<\/p>\n<p>According to \u201cXXI\u201d, the order to rearm them was at first opposed by some French officers but was finally carried out because it was signed by the secretary general of the president\u2019s office at the time, Hubert V\u00e9drine.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three non-governmental organizations on Thursday filed a lawsuit against French bank BNP Paribas for \u201ccomplicity in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes\u201d, they announced. Anti-corruption\u00a0group Sherpa, the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) and Ibuka\u00a0France accuse BNP Paribas of having knowingly enabled the former Rwandan government to buy arms in the midst of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":66404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[],"ji_location":[2431],"class_list":["post-33709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-tribunals","ji_location-rwanda"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.3.1 (Yoast SEO v25.3.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>French bank BNP accused of \u201ccomplicity\u201d in Rwanda genocide - JusticeInfo.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/33709-french-bank-bnp-accused-of-complicity-in-rwanda-genocide.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"French bank BNP accused of \u201ccomplicity\u201d in Rwanda genocide\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Three non-governmental organizations on Thursday filed a lawsuit against French bank BNP Paribas for \u201ccomplicity in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes\u201d, they announced. 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