Tribune de Geneve | By: Pierre-Alexandre Sallier | June 29, 2017:

BNP Paribas is attacked in Paris for its role in arms sales at the time of the genocide. NGOs exhort the forgotten role of an account then opened in the Geneva bank UBP.

The name of the Geneva-based asset management institution Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) appears at the turn of a resounding criminal complaint filed Thursday in Paris against BNP Paribas, within the framework of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The French banking group is accused of “complicity in genocide, complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity”, by the anti-corruption association Sherpa, the Civil Parties for Rwanda and the non-governmental organization Ibuka France (Memory and Justice).

At the center of the case, a sale of weapons tied in mid-June 1994, for $ 1.3 million. One month after the United Nations Security Council declared an embargo on any delivery of weapons to Rwanda. The kalachnikovs, mortars and grenades, reportedly in the west of Rwanda, were distributed officially to Hutu militia under the supervision of the army.

Commission of Inquiry focuses on Lugano:

BNP Paribas is accused of having “authorized two transfers of funds on 14 and 16 June 1994 from the account held by the National Bank of Rwanda to an account of the Swiss bank UBP”, accusing the complainant associations. According to the latter, this account was used by a key intermediary in the sale of arms: Willem Tertius Ehlers, former secretary of Pieter Botha – the South African Prime Minister of 1978 and 1984 – A weapons brokerage firm named Delta Aero. Contacted, the Geneva bank does not comment on this procedure opened against his French counterpart.

The Swiss judiciary had in fact already taken a close interest in this case nearly twenty years ago. And for good reason. As early as March 1996 – less than two years after the Rwandan tragedy – an international commission of inquiry into arms trafficking to the Great Lakes region informs the United Nations Security Council that it has established that the tied funds To this arms trade “were transferred from a bank with its headquarters in Geneva, Union Bancaire Privée”. In July 1996, the Commission of Inquiry wrote to Bern requesting details of the transaction.

That same year, the bank, for its part, sounded the alarm on the account opened at home, after the suspicions he had been subjected to had been relayed by Bern.

Investigation by Berne:

In November 1996, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Confederation opened a criminal investigation for violation of the law on war material. The money deposited on the account is sequestered, the related bank statements seized, the banker managing the account questioned and the searches carried out.

“According to the information provided by the UBP to the Swiss Government, the payments in question came from bank account No. 82113 CHEATA opened at the bank’s branch in Lugano. The account holder has been identified: Mr Willem Petrus Ehlers, a South African national, ‘will summarize the Commission of Inquiry two years later in a new report . A gentleman named Ehlers, who “helped organize the sale of the weapons … subsequently delivered to the former Rwandan government forces”, investigators continued in January 1998. The investigator told the bank that the transaction involved ” Purchase of a lot of … fresh fish.

“The South African intermediary told the bank that the transaction involved buying a lot of … fresh fish”

The case was closed in November 1998, as no complaint had been lodged against the bank in the absence of an infringement committed in Switzerland.

In France, the case now takes on another dimension: beyond the financial role of BNP Paribas in this transfer – which other European institutions would have refused – it raises again the question of the political role played by Paris in the weeks Following the beginning of the genocide. And, between the lines, those of the injunctions issued by the French leaders of the time about Rwanda.

 

To read original article – in French – please click here.

Image Credit – Victims Of Rwandan GenocideWikimedia Commons.

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