Pages

Friday, 18 January 2013

Un groupe d’intellectuels africains à la solde du Rwanda


print

Reportages

18.01.13 Le Potentiel - Un groupe d'intellectuels africains à la solde du Rwanda


Balkanisation de la RDC

Ils sont au nombre de vingt. Ils se disent artistes, écrivains, chercheurs et professeurs d'universités. Du Congo et d'ailleurs. Ils ont écrit au secrétaire général des Nations Unies une lettre dans laquelle ils prennent fait et cause pour le M23, le Rwanda et l'Ouganda. Leur intention est de noyer le discours de balkanisation de la RDC qui prend de l'ampleur au pays et à l'étranger. Peine perdue car, l'éveil de conscience a atteint un point de non retour et ne pourra pas s'estomper du fait de quelques épistoliers de mauvaise foi. En apparence, des négriers des temps modernes.


Nous ne le dirons jamais assez, les balkanisateurs du Congo ont la peau dure. Leur détermination est tellement diabolique qu'ils ne lésinent pas sur les moyens pour arriver à leurs fins. Autant ils actionnent l'axe militaro-politique autant ils embraient sur de pseudo-réflexions de manière à tenter d'octroyer un visage humain à leur œuvre macabre.

Pour cette raison, ils ont procédé au recrutement des intellectuels de tous bords avec pour charge de développer des discours qui puissent passer dans la communauté internationale afin de saper sinon compromettre les actions entreprises dans le cadre du retour d'une paix durable et définitive en RDC. Après plusieurs tentatives infructueuses avec divers centres d'études dans la région des Grands Lacs et dans le monde, ils sont revenus à la charge en achetant la conscience d'un groupe d'intellectuels qui se recrutent dans les milieux d'écrivains, artistes, chercheurs et professeurs d'université.

En bons « nègres », ceux-ci se sont empressés d'écrire au Secrétaire général des Nations Unies dans le but avoué de le distraire en prenant faits et cause pour le Rwanda, indexé par plusieurs rapports d'experts de l'Onu dans la déstabilisation de l'ex-Colonie belge. Dans une démarche incohérente et pleine d'inepties, nos fameux épistoliers se démènent comme des diables dans un bénitier pour défendre l'indéfendable. Leur malheur, disons –le tout de suite, c'est d'avoir choisi de se trouver du mauvais côté de l'histoire. Ce qui leur collera à la peau infiniment, surtout en ce qui concerne les Congolais.

Dire aujourd'hui que le Rwanda n'occupe pas une partie de la RDC est une plaisanterie de mauvais goût pour des gens qui ont la prétention d'être des chercheurs au fait de ce qui se passe en RDC. Bien plus, cette occupation de facto rentre dans le cadre du plan de partition de la RDC. Plan sur lequel des écrits abondent aussi bien au pays que dans le monde.

Tenter d'étouffer la campagne d'éveil de conscience menée actuellement au pays par des discours cousus de fil venu tout droit de l'enfer, c'est étaler sa mauvaise foi sur la place publique. Ce sont les faits qui fondent l'histoire. Or, dans le métier de journalisme ils sont gratifiés du caractère sacré. Vouloir les déformer pour servir des intérêts mesquins c'est se soumettre à la sanction de l'histoire qui a toujours rattrapé tous ceux qui tentent de l'effacer.

Sur ce point précis, l'on se rend vite compte que les signataires de la missive destinée à Ban Ki-Moon sont aveuglés autant que leurs commanditaires par le gain de même que la joie de voir l'ex-colonie belge voler en éclat. Nous le disons pour leur honte. Notre démarche dan les lignes qui suivent, vise à démontrer le ridicule qui entoure ce navet signé par ces « négriers » des temps modernes à la solde de Kagame et consorts.

Leur première bévue c'est de prétendre que l'Onu fait une lecture partiale et réductrice de la situation en RDC en s'acharnant sur le seul M23. Ils s'apitoient même sur le sort de ce dernier : «Nous avons toutefois du mal à accepter la logique sélective de ceux qui s'acharnent contre une rébellion récente pour mieux occulter le rôle dans le conflit de plusieurs groupes criminels, bien plus anciens et actifs, qui ont recours à une violence ouverte et massive ».

Dans le même registre, ils prennent aussi en pitié le Rwanda : « En effet si le Congo, ce pays aussi étendu que toute l'Europe occidentale et aux ressources naturelles quasi inépuisables, est aujourd'hui sans armée ni Etat, ce n'est pas la faute du Rwanda encore profondément traumatisé par un des pires génocides du vingtième siècle et faisant toujours face à la menace que font peser sur sa sécurité des génocidaires bien décidés à « finir le travail » entamé en avril 1994 ».

Selon eux, d'autres groupes armés seraient épargnés par l'Onu, notamment les FDLR, en ce qu'elles constituent un problème sécuritaire pour Kigali. Amnésie. Mémoire. Faut-il rappeler qu'une traque fut lancée en son temps contre les FDLR, concomitamment par les forces de la Monuc, les RDF et les FARDC? Résultat : elles ont survécu. Pourquoi ? Parce qu'elles servent de prétexte pour l'occupation et les incursions incessantes de l'armée rwandaise en RDC.

Des aveux obtenus des nouvelles recrues, il avait été révélé que les éléments FDLR rapatriés par l'Onu étaient « formatés » dans des camps spécialisés puis renvoyés en RDC. Le M23 en comptait des dizaines à ses débuts. Dernièrement, les FDLR ont refait surface aux encablures de Goma alors que le M23 venait de conquérir la ville. Les faits sont têtus !

Dans leur acharnement à défendre coûte que coûte le M23 et le régime de Kigali, nos épistoliers se sont mis à nu : « Les Nations-Unies ont tort, à notre avis, de penser que la mise hors jeu du M23 et la suspension paradoxale de l'aide au développement du Rwanda - un pays salué pour la gestion rigoureuse, saine et transparente de son budget national - vont suffire pour ramener la paix à l'Est du Congo. L'expérience a également montré les limites de la solution militaire consistant à faire appuyer les forces gouvernementales congolaises par la Monusco.

Sur le terrain, une telle option a pour principal résultat d'entretenir la guerre à laquelle on prétend par ailleurs mettre fin. C'est ainsi qu'au cours de la prise de Goma, le M23 a récupéré plus de 4 tonnes d'armes que l'on pourrait retrouver à un moment ou à un autre entre les mains de différents groupes rebelles ». Où est la part de la démarche scientifique dont ils se prévalent et qui devrait justifier l'objectivité de leur démarche ? Pitié !

Au même moment, nos super intellos s'en prennent, sans aucune retenue, aux enquêteurs choisis par l'Onu : « Il apparaît très clairement que dans ce cas précis on a instrumentalisé l'appareil des Nations-Unies pour régler des comptes avec le gouvernement rwandais. Il est surprenant et inacceptable que l'ONU ait placé à la tête d'un groupe d'enquêteurs un homme qui s'est toujours montré en fin de compte si « compréhensif » à l'égard des Forces démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) ».

L'homme dont on parle c'est Steve Hege. La même hargne est manifestée à l'endroit de Jason Stearns, un autre enquêteur de l'Onu. Un rapprochement rapide montre que nos éminents chercheurs reprennent, mutatis mutandis, le discours de Kigali, lequel avait contesté les rapports des experts de l'Onu.

Leur deuxième bévue, c'est d'exhumer la question tustsie. Ils rapprochant Kigali de Kampala et montrent que les deux capitales mènent un même combat : « Il est fondamental de souligner qu'à l'exception probable du M23, tous les groupes armés opérant dans les trois régions du Kivu sont hostiles au Rwanda et aux Congolais rwandophones. Ils constituent aussi un danger certain pour la stabilité du Congo. En outre, certaines de ces rebellions menacent d'autres pays de la région.

C'est le cas notamment du FNL (Front national de Libération), rébellion burundaise active dans la plaine de la Ruzizi et de deux groupes ougandais, la LRA et l'ADF, ciblant particulièrement le régime de Kampala. Aucun de ces faits pourtant lourds de sens n'est mentionné dans ces rapports très contestés et qui ont surtout contribué à jeter de l'huile sur le feu. Ce faisant, ils se sont étrangement éloignés de toute possibilité de solution concertée.

Bref, ils ont découragé le dialogue initié par des pays africains de la région des Grands Lacs et alimenté la méfiance entre communautés congolaises de l'Est et entre le Congo et le Rwanda. Cette lecture tronquée, relayée par la presse internationale et locale congolaise ainsi que par les organisations des droits de l'homme, pourrait elle-même très vite générer de nouvelles violences ».

Dans leur obscurantisme, ils se laissent aller, telles des bêtes déchainées : « Nous ne saurions trop insister sur le fait que la focalisation exclusive sur le M23 et le Rwanda est suspecte et encourage les discours venimeux chez les extrémistes de plus en plus hardis qui n'hésitent plus à appeler dans les media sociaux à l'extermination des Tutsi».

Comme si cela ne suffisait pas, ils vont crescendo : « Nous vous invitons aussi à prendre au sérieux, à la différence de vos prédécesseurs jusqu'en 1994, les signes avant-coureurs d'un embrasement général de la région et, chose tout aussi troublante, les incitations publiques à la haine et au massacre des populations congolaises d'expression kinyarwanda ». Chercheurs, artistes ou écrivains, ce groupe d'intellectuels mérite d'être interpellé par la justice internationale pour la bonne et simple raison qu'ils font l'apologie de la violence. Leur pamphlet rappelle un autre écrit en 1995 par une quarantaine de ressortissants de l'ancien Kivu et adressé au feu président Mobutu.

La troisième bévue, c'est le fait de s'afficher publiquement comme porte-voix du régime de Kigali dans la défense de la balkanisation de la RDC. « Selon nous, la meilleure façon de contribuer à la paix et à la sécurité dans la région des Grands Lacs consisterait, entre autres, à prendre au sérieux les légitimes revendications sécuritaires du Rwanda », recommandent-ils. Et par voie de conséquence, l'Armée rwandaise pourrait s'adjuger du droit de faire des incursions en RDC quand et où elle veut chaque fois que la régime de Kigali jugera que la sécurité de son territoire serait menacé.

Sans aucune considération pour le Congo et le peuple congolais, ils prétendent exhumer des écrits qui pourraient justifier la remise en cause des frontières héritées de la colonisation. Cela s'appelle affront et mérite que l'on s'y attarde. « L'impératif de l'heure est la défense résolue par les Nations-Unies du principe de l'intangibilité des frontières congolaises. Elle est toutefois vouée à un échec certain si elle fait l'impasse sur les discriminations envers les citoyens congolais d'expression kinyarwanda, propriétaires de plein droit des terres congolaises où ils vivent de génération en génération depuis des siècles ».

Voilà en quels termes, les collabos de Kagamé s'adressent au Secrétaire général des Nations Unies. Et ils ne manquent de mots pour montrer à quel point ils sont inféodés aux balkanisateurs de la RDC : « Certains milieux, ignorant les leçons de l'histoire, s'imaginent qu'il suffirait de se débarrasser de la communauté d'expression kinyarwanda du Congo pour améliorer les conditions d'existence du reste de la population ». N'est-ce pas grave comme affirmation ?

Nous espérons que le secrétaire général de l'ONU, destinataire de ce brûlot, aura compris que son contenu est révélateur de la détermination de certaines puissances politico-financières à ne jamais laisser l'ex-colonie belge vivre en paix. Cela met aussi en lumière les sous-traitants de ce plan, à savoir les régimes de Kigali et de Kampala ainsi que tous ces négriers des temps modernes qui se recrutent malheureusement dans des milieux aussi respectables que les universités et les centres de recherche. Auxquels se sont associés des écrivains et des artistes, à la manière des moutons de panurge.

Encadré

Signataires :

1 Boubacar Boris Diop, Sénégal, romancier, essayiste et enseignant, Université Gaston Berger, Saint-Louis- Sénégal

2 Godefroid Kä Mana, RD-Congo, philosophe, analyste politique et théologien, Professeur, Université évangélique du Cameroun, Institut catholique de Goma-RDCongo.

3 Jean-Pierre Karegeye, Rwanda, Directeur du Centre d'études pluridisciplinaires sur le génocide, Professeur assistant, Macalester College, Minnesota-USA.

4 Margee Ensign, USA, Présidente de l'Universite américaine du Nigeria.

5 Koulsy Lamko, Tchad, Romancier, dramaturge, directeur de la Casa Hankili Africa, Centro Historico in Mexico.

6 Wandia Njoya, Kenya, Professeure assistante, Daystar University, Nairobi-Kenya.

7 Aminata Dramane Traoré, Mali, écrivaine, sociologue, ancienne ministre de la Culture.

8 Susan Allen, USA, Professeure, Emory University, Atlanta.

9 Jean-Claude Djereke, Côte d'Ivoire, Centre de Recherches Pluridisciplinaires sur les Communautés d'Afrique Noire et des Diasporas, Ottawa, Canada.

10 Jean-François Dupaquier, France, écrivain , Journaliste

11 Erik Ehn, USA, Directeur de programme, Writing for Performance, Brown University.

12 Mireille Fanon Mendes-France, France, Présidente, Fondation Frantz Fanon.

13 Gerise Herndon, USA, professeure, directrice de Gender Studies, Nebraska Wesleyan University.

14 Timothy Horner, USA, Professeur associé, Center for Peace and Justice Education, Villanova University.

15 Jean-Baptiste Kakoma, RDCongo, Médecin, Professeur, ancien doyen de la faculté de médecine, Ancien recteur de l'université de Lubumbashi en RDCongo, Directeur de l'école de Santé publique, Université nationale du Rwanda.

16 Aloys Mahwa, chercheur, centre d'études pluridisciplinaires sur le génocide, Kigali-Rwanda.

17 Yolande Mukagasana, Rwanda, écrivaine, Survivante du génocide, Lauréate du prix la colombe d'or, lauréate du prix Unesco de l'éducation pour la paix.

18 Timothée Ngakoutou, Tchad/France, professeur, ancien recteur de l'université du Tchad, ancien haut fonctionnaire de l'UNESCO chargé de mission pour l'éducation.

19 Moukoko Priso, Cameroun, Professeur, Université évangélique du Cameroon.
20 François Wokouache, Cameroun, cinéaste, Directeur de KEMIT.

< Retour

Tony Blair widens his web via the stock markets

 

Tony Blair widens his web via the stock markets

Tony Blair has set up his own stock market trading desk at his Mayfair headquarters.

Stock market trading desk installed at Tony Blair's headquarters
Tony Blair, pictured with wife Cherie, has set up a trading desk led by a former Barclays banker Photo: EDDIE MULHOLLAND

8:30AM GMT 13 Jan 2013

His investment unit, headed by a former senior banker at Barclays, reflects the former prime minister's growing business empire, worth tens of millions of pounds.
Five members of his staff are registered with the Financial Services Authority and trading screens have been installed at Mr Blair's offices, in Grosvenor Square in central London.
Mr Blair has established a complex web of companies, designed, according to accountants, to hide just how much money he makes and from where his money comes.
He has denied being "super rich", but having built up a property portfolio of several homes and two multimillion-pound businesses, it is expected that he will enter the rich-lists for the first time this year with a fortune of somewhere between £35 million and £60 million.
Details of his trading desk have been pieced together by The Sunday Telegraph, which has conducted a series of investigations into Mr Blair's finances since he left office in 2007.
13 Jan 2013
  • Tony Blair charity receives US funding

  • 13 Oct 2012
  • Tony Blair expands empire to oil-rich South Sudan 15 Jul 2012

  • Blair rich project's £4m Brazil deal 18 Nov 2012

  • Tony Blair's charity refused aid funding 18 Feb 2012

  • The investigation shows:
    * A trading desk is now operating at his London headquarters;
    * Five employees at one of his companies, Firerush Ventures, have obtained licences from the FSA;
    * The team is led by David Lyon, formerly managing director at Barclays Capital;
    * The FSA licences give Mr Blair's staff the power to advise clients and invest money on their behalf.
    A posting on LinkedIn, the professional networking website, discloses details of Mr Blair's operation. It was written by an IT consultant called Matt Walsh, who worked for Mr Blair for just over a year until May 2011.
    Mr Walsh gave a full description of his duties. He wrote: "Supporting all functions of IT at a highly sensitive site in Mayfair. This was for a [sic] Tony Blair's private office and charities which is over 100 local and remote users."
    Mr Walsh listed all the IT systems he oversaw during his time with Mr Blair, including two types of trading systems. One of his duties, he explained, was providing "Reuters 3000 Xtra and Bloomberg support for small trading team".
    Reuters 3000 Xtra is an electronic trading platform typically used by professional traders and analysts in trading rooms. The system gives traders real-time information on stock market prices as well as on commodities, bonds and other financial data. It also has a trading function. Bloomberg is a separate terminal which can also be used by traders.
    A second IT consultant, Scott Macpherson, posted on his LinkedIn profile that he worked for Mr Blair between October 2009 and May 2011. Both men appear to have been brought in by Exceed IT, a company in north London.
    The details listed by Mr Macpherson of his work at Mr Blair's headquarters, described as "TBO", included helping to set up additional offices from where Mr Blair or his Africa Governance Initiative operate around the world, including Yale University in the US, where the former prime minister has held a lecturing post.
    On his profile, Mr Macpherson said his duties included: "Planning and implementation of satellite sites, primarily consulting on and implementing sites in Kuwait, Sierra Leone, Toronto, Liberia, Yale NY, Rwanda as well as other locations." Like Mr Walsh, he said he provided "Bloomberg support for small trading team".
    The disclosure of the existence of the trading desk suggests that Mr Blair may be making more money than has been realised.
    Mr Blair has two separate trading arms, Firerush Ventures and Windrush Ventures, which consist of a series of limited companies, limited partnerships and limited liability partnerships.
    The latest accounts show that one of those companies, Windrush Ventures Ltd, had an income of more than £16million and profits of £3.6million for the year ending March 31 2012. Profits more than trebled in that time and turnover was up £4million on the previous year's accounts.
    Windrush Ventures paid total tax of just over £900,000 with more than £12.5million written off as administrative expenses. The group's wage bill is £2.3million, meaning that more than £10million of expenses is unexplained in the annual accounts. Firerush Ventures made a profit last year of £68,000.
    Mr Blair has invested heavily in his team, having hired Mr Lyon at the end of the summer. Mr Lyon was a managing director at Barclays in the debt capital markets financial institutions group. He had spent 15 years at Barclays and was likely, with bonuses, to have been earning a sizeable sum.
    A spokesman for Mr Blair said: "David Lyon has been appointed to grow and develop Tony Blair's business activities. These commercial interests provide important funding for his charitable work."
    Mr Lyon is listed at Companies House as a director of Firerush Ventures Ltd, which channels the money from Mr Blair's lucrative business consultancy, Tony Blair Associates. Mr Lyon was registered by Firerush with the FSA in November, allowing him to advise clients on their investments and to handle their money.
    He is registered with "a CF30 customer function" which covers several activities including "advising on investments", "dealing, as principal or as agent, and arranging deals in investments" and "acting in the capacity of an investment manager".
    Four other employees are registered by Firerush with the FSA: Varun Chandra, an Oxford graduate who previously worked for Lehman Brothers; Prashant Francis, a former employee at JP Morgan, the investment bank; Catherine Rimmer, a former Downing Street aide and now Mr Blair's strategic director; and Jason Searancke, a director of Firerush and Windrush who previously worked for KPMG, the auditing firm.
    The total scale of Mr Blair's earnings is unclear, with values on his wealth put at anywhere up to £60million.
    He has lucrative consultancies with JP Morgan and the global insurance company Zurich International while he also earns as much as £200,000 a time for public speaking.
    Windrush Ventures channels money for the Government Advisory Practice, a consultancy set up by Mr Blair to provide advice to national and regional governments. The consultancy has signed multimillion-pound deals in Kuwait, Brazil and Kazakhstan, and teams are deployed around the world.
    The accounts of Windrush Ventures show how Mr Blair's business is booming. The company has 29 staff, with a wage bill of £2.05million, working out at an average salary of almost £71,000.
    Firerush administers the funding for Tony Blair Associates, which advises companies and sovereign wealth funds, among them Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi wealth fund. According to its latest accounts, available from last week at Companies House, Firerush had about £1.3 million in the bank as of last April.
    Mr Blair is said to have earned as much as a million dollars (£620,000) for just a few hours' work, brokering negotiations in a mining deal involving the conglomerate Glencore and the Qatari ruling family.
    According to reports, he was brought into the negotiations by Michael Klein, a New York financier, who advised on the deal. It is suggested that Mr Blair and Mr Klein are in talks about a "commercial alliance" which, if true, would raise Mr Blair's earnings potential even further.
    Mr Blair's friendships with world leaders and other figures of influence would be a good fit with Mr Klein's contacts in global finance.
    A spokesman for Mr Blair said: "There is no 'trading team'. One of the businesses is FSA-regulated and those staff registered carry out their work within FSA permissions.
    "Tony Blair and Michael Klein have worked on a couple of things together and may do so again in the future — they are not in talks about merging."
    A statement on one of Mr Blair's various websites explains that financial statements for Firerush and Windrush, published last week, "do not represent his earnings or the earnings of his business and are not referable to them". The statement went on: "The profit of the Windrush Group (£3.6million) is money that is being held in the company for re-investment in expanding the business. There is a total of £909,000 payable in corporation tax on the group profit.
    "As a smaller company Firerush only publishes abbreviated accounts. It again is a company that is solely for the costs of the business. The £68,000 therefore represents the surplus on the running costs; on which corporation tax is paid. The money made by Mr Blair and the employees from Firerush business is subject to full personal income tax; and is not published in these accounts. Mr Blair continues to be a UK taxpayer and pays full personal tax on all his earnings worldwide."

    Tony Blair widens his web via the stock markets

     

    Tony Blair widens his web via the stock markets

    Tony Blair has set up his own stock market trading desk at his Mayfair headquarters.

    Stock market trading desk installed at Tony Blair's headquarters
    Tony Blair, pictured with wife Cherie, has set up a trading desk led by a former Barclays banker Photo: EDDIE MULHOLLAND

    8:30AM GMT 13 Jan 2013

    His investment unit, headed by a former senior banker at Barclays, reflects the former prime minister's growing business empire, worth tens of millions of pounds.
    Five members of his staff are registered with the Financial Services Authority and trading screens have been installed at Mr Blair's offices, in Grosvenor Square in central London.
    Mr Blair has established a complex web of companies, designed, according to accountants, to hide just how much money he makes and from where his money comes.
    He has denied being "super rich", but having built up a property portfolio of several homes and two multimillion-pound businesses, it is expected that he will enter the rich-lists for the first time this year with a fortune of somewhere between £35 million and £60 million.
    Details of his trading desk have been pieced together by The Sunday Telegraph, which has conducted a series of investigations into Mr Blair's finances since he left office in 2007.
    13 Jan 2013
  • Tony Blair charity receives US funding

  • 13 Oct 2012
  • Tony Blair expands empire to oil-rich South Sudan 15 Jul 2012

  • Blair rich project's £4m Brazil deal 18 Nov 2012

  • Tony Blair's charity refused aid funding 18 Feb 2012

  • The investigation shows:
    * A trading desk is now operating at his London headquarters;
    * Five employees at one of his companies, Firerush Ventures, have obtained licences from the FSA;
    * The team is led by David Lyon, formerly managing director at Barclays Capital;
    * The FSA licences give Mr Blair's staff the power to advise clients and invest money on their behalf.
    A posting on LinkedIn, the professional networking website, discloses details of Mr Blair's operation. It was written by an IT consultant called Matt Walsh, who worked for Mr Blair for just over a year until May 2011.
    Mr Walsh gave a full description of his duties. He wrote: "Supporting all functions of IT at a highly sensitive site in Mayfair. This was for a [sic] Tony Blair's private office and charities which is over 100 local and remote users."
    Mr Walsh listed all the IT systems he oversaw during his time with Mr Blair, including two types of trading systems. One of his duties, he explained, was providing "Reuters 3000 Xtra and Bloomberg support for small trading team".
    Reuters 3000 Xtra is an electronic trading platform typically used by professional traders and analysts in trading rooms. The system gives traders real-time information on stock market prices as well as on commodities, bonds and other financial data. It also has a trading function. Bloomberg is a separate terminal which can also be used by traders.
    A second IT consultant, Scott Macpherson, posted on his LinkedIn profile that he worked for Mr Blair between October 2009 and May 2011. Both men appear to have been brought in by Exceed IT, a company in north London.
    The details listed by Mr Macpherson of his work at Mr Blair's headquarters, described as "TBO", included helping to set up additional offices from where Mr Blair or his Africa Governance Initiative operate around the world, including Yale University in the US, where the former prime minister has held a lecturing post.
    On his profile, Mr Macpherson said his duties included: "Planning and implementation of satellite sites, primarily consulting on and implementing sites in Kuwait, Sierra Leone, Toronto, Liberia, Yale NY, Rwanda as well as other locations." Like Mr Walsh, he said he provided "Bloomberg support for small trading team".
    The disclosure of the existence of the trading desk suggests that Mr Blair may be making more money than has been realised.
    Mr Blair has two separate trading arms, Firerush Ventures and Windrush Ventures, which consist of a series of limited companies, limited partnerships and limited liability partnerships.
    The latest accounts show that one of those companies, Windrush Ventures Ltd, had an income of more than £16million and profits of £3.6million for the year ending March 31 2012. Profits more than trebled in that time and turnover was up £4million on the previous year's accounts.
    Windrush Ventures paid total tax of just over £900,000 with more than £12.5million written off as administrative expenses. The group's wage bill is £2.3million, meaning that more than £10million of expenses is unexplained in the annual accounts. Firerush Ventures made a profit last year of £68,000.
    Mr Blair has invested heavily in his team, having hired Mr Lyon at the end of the summer. Mr Lyon was a managing director at Barclays in the debt capital markets financial institutions group. He had spent 15 years at Barclays and was likely, with bonuses, to have been earning a sizeable sum.
    A spokesman for Mr Blair said: "David Lyon has been appointed to grow and develop Tony Blair's business activities. These commercial interests provide important funding for his charitable work."
    Mr Lyon is listed at Companies House as a director of Firerush Ventures Ltd, which channels the money from Mr Blair's lucrative business consultancy, Tony Blair Associates. Mr Lyon was registered by Firerush with the FSA in November, allowing him to advise clients on their investments and to handle their money.
    He is registered with "a CF30 customer function" which covers several activities including "advising on investments", "dealing, as principal or as agent, and arranging deals in investments" and "acting in the capacity of an investment manager".
    Four other employees are registered by Firerush with the FSA: Varun Chandra, an Oxford graduate who previously worked for Lehman Brothers; Prashant Francis, a former employee at JP Morgan, the investment bank; Catherine Rimmer, a former Downing Street aide and now Mr Blair's strategic director; and Jason Searancke, a director of Firerush and Windrush who previously worked for KPMG, the auditing firm.
    The total scale of Mr Blair's earnings is unclear, with values on his wealth put at anywhere up to £60million.
    He has lucrative consultancies with JP Morgan and the global insurance company Zurich International while he also earns as much as £200,000 a time for public speaking.
    Windrush Ventures channels money for the Government Advisory Practice, a consultancy set up by Mr Blair to provide advice to national and regional governments. The consultancy has signed multimillion-pound deals in Kuwait, Brazil and Kazakhstan, and teams are deployed around the world.
    The accounts of Windrush Ventures show how Mr Blair's business is booming. The company has 29 staff, with a wage bill of £2.05million, working out at an average salary of almost £71,000.
    Firerush administers the funding for Tony Blair Associates, which advises companies and sovereign wealth funds, among them Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi wealth fund. According to its latest accounts, available from last week at Companies House, Firerush had about £1.3 million in the bank as of last April.
    Mr Blair is said to have earned as much as a million dollars (£620,000) for just a few hours' work, brokering negotiations in a mining deal involving the conglomerate Glencore and the Qatari ruling family.
    According to reports, he was brought into the negotiations by Michael Klein, a New York financier, who advised on the deal. It is suggested that Mr Blair and Mr Klein are in talks about a "commercial alliance" which, if true, would raise Mr Blair's earnings potential even further.
    Mr Blair's friendships with world leaders and other figures of influence would be a good fit with Mr Klein's contacts in global finance.
    A spokesman for Mr Blair said: "There is no 'trading team'. One of the businesses is FSA-regulated and those staff registered carry out their work within FSA permissions.
    "Tony Blair and Michael Klein have worked on a couple of things together and may do so again in the future — they are not in talks about merging."
    A statement on one of Mr Blair's various websites explains that financial statements for Firerush and Windrush, published last week, "do not represent his earnings or the earnings of his business and are not referable to them". The statement went on: "The profit of the Windrush Group (£3.6million) is money that is being held in the company for re-investment in expanding the business. There is a total of £909,000 payable in corporation tax on the group profit.
    "As a smaller company Firerush only publishes abbreviated accounts. It again is a company that is solely for the costs of the business. The £68,000 therefore represents the surplus on the running costs; on which corporation tax is paid. The money made by Mr Blair and the employees from Firerush business is subject to full personal income tax; and is not published in these accounts. Mr Blair continues to be a UK taxpayer and pays full personal tax on all his earnings worldwide."

    Steve Hege explains the research method used for the GoE reports

    Interview with Steve Hege, Former Coordinator, UN Group of Experts on the DRC

    Steve Hege is the former coordinator of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which in November 2012 presented a report to the UN Security Council that contained overwhelming evidence of Rwanda and Uganda's support of the M23 rebel group.
    The interview was conducted by Francesco Mancini, IPI Director of Research, over email.
    Francesco Mancini: In the Group of Experts final report published in November 2012, you and your colleagues concluded that the government of Rwanda, with the support from allies within the government of Uganda, created, equipped, trained, advised, and directly reinforced and commanded the M23 rebellion. Can you explain how you reached that conclusion? Was it simply based on "human intelligence" alone?
    Steve Hege: As with all Groups of Experts for sanctions regimes, we adhered to a rigorous methodology approved by the Security Council. If by "human intelligence," you are referring to first-hand witnesses to events, then yes, indeed, we prioritized these sources, primarily ex-combatants, but only as the starting point of our investigations. We interviewed individually over a hundred former M23 members, including 57 who claimed to be Rwandan citizens. All gave detailed accounts of Rwandan support to the rebels that they personally observed during their time with M23.
    We then worked to corroborate this massive amount of information with a larger network of over a hundred others sources—some eyewitnesses and others considered to have credible access to the rebellion. These included local leaders, businessmen, border agents, simple peasants, as well as former Rwandan army officers and former officers of M23's predecessor, the CNDP, who maintain frequent contact with their family and friends who joined the new rebellion. We also developed our own active sources within the M23 who themselves acknowledged the support of Rwanda and Uganda to their movement.
    To further confirm the patterns and categories of external support being provided to M23, we sought out as many tangible pieces of evidence as possible throughout our investigations, including text messages, emails, and photos of meetings held in Rwanda to mobilize support for the rebels, money transfers to M23 and its allies, Rwandan military uniforms and ammunition cartridges found on the battlefield, recordings of radio communications between the rebels and Rwandan and Ugandan army officers, phone call logs made by individuals linked to armed groups, as well as satellite images showing very clearly the footpaths connecting M23 headquarters with Rwandan military bases, corresponding perfectly to descriptions of many ex- combatants (Annex 6).
    In addition, to complement the information we had collected on the supply of arms by Rwanda, we also documented M23's possession of heavy weapons traditionally used by the Rwandan army. When the Rwandan intelligence argued they had already destroyed all of these heavy weapons in their arsenal, they could only show us some old AK-47s as proof and tried to convince us that 75mm cannon rounds we inquired about were hidden beneath them. We later obtained documents demonstrating not only that Rwanda had not destroyed any heavy weapons in the last decade, but that it even made a formal request for technical assistance in August of this year to destroy precisely the same 75mm and 120 mm rounds we cited in our reports.
    Furthermore, we also relied on our own observations during frequent field missions to M23 territory, where we confirmed rebel use of Rwandan army radio equipment and uniforms. We personally witnessed close cooperation between the rebels and special forces of the Rwandan army (officially deployed in the DRC at the time) as well as deliveries of military equipment from Uganda. Despite the physical threats made against us and our collaborators, we also made seven trips to Rwanda in order to corroborate the details provided by ex-combatants, including a visit to Bosco Ntagnda's Hotel Bushokoro in Kinigi, which not only perfectly matched their descriptions but was also surrounded by soldiers of the Rwandan army to protect the recruitment site.
    Finally, we confirmed our information with intelligence agencies such as those of Uganda, Burundi, Western countries and the Congolese government, even though the latter had refused to cooperate with our investigations prior to the publication of the addendum to the interim report. We later received more official support from the Congolese authorities, but their information never constituted the foundation of any of our inquiries. Although they deny it now, senior Ugandan officials not only confirmed our findings on Rwanda, but also acknowledged that M23 received extensive support from within their own security services, promising us there would be investigations and arrests which never materialized.
    FM: A 131-page response from the government of Rwanda to your earlier interim report claims that the Group did not give Rwanda a right of reply and did not talk to Rwandan officials. Is that correct, and can you give us more details about your engagement with them?
    SH: We gave the Rwandan government several opportunities to respond to the results of our investigations. They first refused to receive us during an official visit to Kigali in May, later defending that our presence in Rwanda had nothing to do with the arms embargo; a rather odd argument given that the embargo is the raison d'être of the Group of Experts. Then, when the sanctions committee explicitly asked us to delay the submission of our addendum to the interim report to give the Rwandans an additional opportunity to reply formally, the Rwandan minister of foreign affairs declined to give me any response when I personally briefed her on our conclusions even before submitting the final document to the sanctions committee. A few hours after our meeting, at a UN press conference, the minister claimed that no one had shared with Rwanda the results of our investigations.
    Regarding the official Rwandan rebuttal you mentioned; it is a document that we studied and which we responded to exhaustively in Annex 3 of our final report, but the major premise of their argument was that the Group was the victim of a huge conspiracy orchestrated by the Congolese government. Not only as experienced investigators would this have been impossible, but the Congolese government could not have been capable of fabricating hundreds of false witnesses, documents, radio communications, emails scattered across three provinces, particularly when, at the outset of the M23 rebellion, it was not even cooperating with us. If true, that would have been the sign of a very effective state, not the "black hole" in need of radical governance reform that Rwanda has consistently tried to portray the Congo as.
    During a second visit to Kigali in July, Rwandan officials briefed us personally on their rebuttal, but appeared much more interested in interrogating us as to the identities of our sources and individuals collaborating with our investigations. Even though they acknowledged that, indeed, M23 recruits could have been coming from Rwanda, no investigation was ever even conducted.
    From the beginning of August through the end of the mandate in December, the government of Rwanda repeatedly refused to meet with us or cooperate with any of our investigations.
    FM: The Rwandans appeared to have conducted a "campaign" against you personally based on an article you had published in the past. Why did they claim you were biased against Rwanda, and did this undermine your work?
    SH: When it was clear we were not going to alter the addendum to our interim report, the Rwandans orchestrated a character assassination campaign against the Group and me in particular, claiming that I was "genocide-denier" and sympathizer of the Rwandan rebels of the FDLR. They based this solely on an internal discussion paper, for which I had been named as the point of contact, inadvertently placed on a document-sharing site on the Internet. The paper sought to analyze the internal thinking and possible reactions of the FDLR against the civilian population during military operations planned in early 2009, as well as reflect on the their demobilization and repatriation within the historical and political context of the region, including the same massacres subsequently documented by the UN's "mapping" report, which are critical to the ideology of the FDLR. It does not deny the Rwandan genocide, and it even refers directly to the involvement of some FDLR commanders in the genocide. This analytic exercise also encompassed other discussion papers on other armed groups in eastern DRC, including the CNDP at the time, but that does not mean that I defend their perspectives either. I personally requested that this document be removed from the Internet because none of the discussion papers were meant to be made public.
    On the basis of this document, the government of Rwanda and their media surrogates published countless articles and blog posts against me, incited genocide survivors to call for my dismissal, hired US lawyers to repeat their same arguments as well as a French-Israeli "cyber-warfare" specialist to incessantly attack us, claiming that I wanted to take over the mineral wealth in the eastern Congo. They also made up information about my family and a supposed "ex-wife and child" and created blood-stained caricatures of me shredding files about the Rwandan genocide claiming that I "can only live in in a world with no Tutsis." President Kagame himself told journalists that I "had been advocating the genocide for years," and members of his close staff even spent months preparing false testimonies of FDLR officers about how I provided them weapons. Fortunately, I was able to personally interview one of them before he was to return to Rwanda and hold a press conference. He obviously had no idea who I was, and once confronted with the truth, he eventually acknowledged that he was paid to make these detailed false claims about "Steve Hege."
    Despite these attacks, the government of Rwanda is fully aware of my objectivity as an investigator on the armed groups, including the FDLR. During previous mandates, although the Rwandan intelligence services were not entirely satisfied with our conclusions regarding the links between the FDLR and the political dissident Kayumba Nyamwasa, they had, at the time, respected my objective approach in systematically documenting the support networks of the Rwandan Hutu rebels, particularly in the 2011 final report, which did include links to other Rwandan dissidents. I have also cooperated with German prosecutors in the ongoing trial against the former president and vice president of the FDLR, and in 2006 and 2007 with the UN peacekeeping mission, I conducted numerous missions into the dense jungles of South Kivu to convince FDLR combatants to voluntarily disarm and return peacefully to their homes.
    But these types of false accusations—maybe not so hostile and personal— are to be expected with this type of work (investigating support to armed groups) particularly given that those violating the arms embargo obviously do not want this to be known, much less appear in an official document of the Security Council. In 2010 and 2011, I had already been accused by members of the Rwandan and Burundian political oppositions of supposedly being too sympathetic to their governments. It's simply the natural reflex to claim the alleged bias of an investigator against those who appear in the conclusions of a rigorous and independent investigation.
    Fortunately, diplomats are able to see beyond these frequent accusations against Group of Experts members, as despite Rwanda's repeated demands for my removal, no member of the sanctions committee of the Security Council ever asked me even a single question about my so-called "partiality."
    FM: How were your conclusions received by members states from the sanctions committee? Will the election of Rwanda to the Security Council affect the work/reports of the Group of Experts?
    SH: The Security Council was very supportive of our work, and the language of resolutions 2076 and 2078 reflect a strong consensus regarding the overwhelming nature of external backing to the M23 rebellion. Not only did we hold numerous meetings bilaterally and multilaterally with many Security Council members to discuss our methodology and findings, but engaged member states confirmed our findings on their own. The organogram in Annex 22 of the final report, which places Rwandan Minster of Defense James Kabarebe as the rebellion's supreme commander, is just one illustrative example of the information that many countries hold in addition to our findings and that of several other independent inquiries.
    From our perspective, it would of course be great if the sanctions committee immediately accepted our conclusions, but they do indeed thoroughly scrutinize our findings and attempt to corroborate them with their own information gathering. None of our reports alone would ever outweigh the internal reporting of a member state, particularly those who took unilateral measures in suspending aid to a development partner as important as Rwanda due to its blatant violations of the arms embargo. They may refer to our report publically, but important policy decisions are always based first and foremost on their own evidence base.
    Despite Rwanda's recent arrival to the Security Council, the Group's mandate had already been renewed, and a new six-member team appointed by the Secretary-General. However, any member of the Security Council can block candidates for sanctions as well as proposed members for future mandates of the Group of Experts, a fact Rwanda's mission to the UN has boasted about.
    About the photo: A map from the November 2012 report shows RDF and M23 infiltrations towards Masisi territory.

     

    Steve Hege explains the research method used for the GoE reports

    Interview with Steve Hege, Former Coordinator, UN Group of Experts on the DRC

    Steve Hege is the former coordinator of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which in November 2012 presented a report to the UN Security Council that contained overwhelming evidence of Rwanda and Uganda's support of the M23 rebel group.
    The interview was conducted by Francesco Mancini, IPI Director of Research, over email.
    Francesco Mancini: In the Group of Experts final report published in November 2012, you and your colleagues concluded that the government of Rwanda, with the support from allies within the government of Uganda, created, equipped, trained, advised, and directly reinforced and commanded the M23 rebellion. Can you explain how you reached that conclusion? Was it simply based on "human intelligence" alone?
    Steve Hege: As with all Groups of Experts for sanctions regimes, we adhered to a rigorous methodology approved by the Security Council. If by "human intelligence," you are referring to first-hand witnesses to events, then yes, indeed, we prioritized these sources, primarily ex-combatants, but only as the starting point of our investigations. We interviewed individually over a hundred former M23 members, including 57 who claimed to be Rwandan citizens. All gave detailed accounts of Rwandan support to the rebels that they personally observed during their time with M23.
    We then worked to corroborate this massive amount of information with a larger network of over a hundred others sources—some eyewitnesses and others considered to have credible access to the rebellion. These included local leaders, businessmen, border agents, simple peasants, as well as former Rwandan army officers and former officers of M23's predecessor, the CNDP, who maintain frequent contact with their family and friends who joined the new rebellion. We also developed our own active sources within the M23 who themselves acknowledged the support of Rwanda and Uganda to their movement.
    To further confirm the patterns and categories of external support being provided to M23, we sought out as many tangible pieces of evidence as possible throughout our investigations, including text messages, emails, and photos of meetings held in Rwanda to mobilize support for the rebels, money transfers to M23 and its allies, Rwandan military uniforms and ammunition cartridges found on the battlefield, recordings of radio communications between the rebels and Rwandan and Ugandan army officers, phone call logs made by individuals linked to armed groups, as well as satellite images showing very clearly the footpaths connecting M23 headquarters with Rwandan military bases, corresponding perfectly to descriptions of many ex- combatants (Annex 6).
    In addition, to complement the information we had collected on the supply of arms by Rwanda, we also documented M23's possession of heavy weapons traditionally used by the Rwandan army. When the Rwandan intelligence argued they had already destroyed all of these heavy weapons in their arsenal, they could only show us some old AK-47s as proof and tried to convince us that 75mm cannon rounds we inquired about were hidden beneath them. We later obtained documents demonstrating not only that Rwanda had not destroyed any heavy weapons in the last decade, but that it even made a formal request for technical assistance in August of this year to destroy precisely the same 75mm and 120 mm rounds we cited in our reports.
    Furthermore, we also relied on our own observations during frequent field missions to M23 territory, where we confirmed rebel use of Rwandan army radio equipment and uniforms. We personally witnessed close cooperation between the rebels and special forces of the Rwandan army (officially deployed in the DRC at the time) as well as deliveries of military equipment from Uganda. Despite the physical threats made against us and our collaborators, we also made seven trips to Rwanda in order to corroborate the details provided by ex-combatants, including a visit to Bosco Ntagnda's Hotel Bushokoro in Kinigi, which not only perfectly matched their descriptions but was also surrounded by soldiers of the Rwandan army to protect the recruitment site.
    Finally, we confirmed our information with intelligence agencies such as those of Uganda, Burundi, Western countries and the Congolese government, even though the latter had refused to cooperate with our investigations prior to the publication of the addendum to the interim report. We later received more official support from the Congolese authorities, but their information never constituted the foundation of any of our inquiries. Although they deny it now, senior Ugandan officials not only confirmed our findings on Rwanda, but also acknowledged that M23 received extensive support from within their own security services, promising us there would be investigations and arrests which never materialized.
    FM: A 131-page response from the government of Rwanda to your earlier interim report claims that the Group did not give Rwanda a right of reply and did not talk to Rwandan officials. Is that correct, and can you give us more details about your engagement with them?
    SH: We gave the Rwandan government several opportunities to respond to the results of our investigations. They first refused to receive us during an official visit to Kigali in May, later defending that our presence in Rwanda had nothing to do with the arms embargo; a rather odd argument given that the embargo is the raison d'être of the Group of Experts. Then, when the sanctions committee explicitly asked us to delay the submission of our addendum to the interim report to give the Rwandans an additional opportunity to reply formally, the Rwandan minister of foreign affairs declined to give me any response when I personally briefed her on our conclusions even before submitting the final document to the sanctions committee. A few hours after our meeting, at a UN press conference, the minister claimed that no one had shared with Rwanda the results of our investigations.
    Regarding the official Rwandan rebuttal you mentioned; it is a document that we studied and which we responded to exhaustively in Annex 3 of our final report, but the major premise of their argument was that the Group was the victim of a huge conspiracy orchestrated by the Congolese government. Not only as experienced investigators would this have been impossible, but the Congolese government could not have been capable of fabricating hundreds of false witnesses, documents, radio communications, emails scattered across three provinces, particularly when, at the outset of the M23 rebellion, it was not even cooperating with us. If true, that would have been the sign of a very effective state, not the "black hole" in need of radical governance reform that Rwanda has consistently tried to portray the Congo as.
    During a second visit to Kigali in July, Rwandan officials briefed us personally on their rebuttal, but appeared much more interested in interrogating us as to the identities of our sources and individuals collaborating with our investigations. Even though they acknowledged that, indeed, M23 recruits could have been coming from Rwanda, no investigation was ever even conducted.
    From the beginning of August through the end of the mandate in December, the government of Rwanda repeatedly refused to meet with us or cooperate with any of our investigations.
    FM: The Rwandans appeared to have conducted a "campaign" against you personally based on an article you had published in the past. Why did they claim you were biased against Rwanda, and did this undermine your work?
    SH: When it was clear we were not going to alter the addendum to our interim report, the Rwandans orchestrated a character assassination campaign against the Group and me in particular, claiming that I was "genocide-denier" and sympathizer of the Rwandan rebels of the FDLR. They based this solely on an internal discussion paper, for which I had been named as the point of contact, inadvertently placed on a document-sharing site on the Internet. The paper sought to analyze the internal thinking and possible reactions of the FDLR against the civilian population during military operations planned in early 2009, as well as reflect on the their demobilization and repatriation within the historical and political context of the region, including the same massacres subsequently documented by the UN's "mapping" report, which are critical to the ideology of the FDLR. It does not deny the Rwandan genocide, and it even refers directly to the involvement of some FDLR commanders in the genocide. This analytic exercise also encompassed other discussion papers on other armed groups in eastern DRC, including the CNDP at the time, but that does not mean that I defend their perspectives either. I personally requested that this document be removed from the Internet because none of the discussion papers were meant to be made public.
    On the basis of this document, the government of Rwanda and their media surrogates published countless articles and blog posts against me, incited genocide survivors to call for my dismissal, hired US lawyers to repeat their same arguments as well as a French-Israeli "cyber-warfare" specialist to incessantly attack us, claiming that I wanted to take over the mineral wealth in the eastern Congo. They also made up information about my family and a supposed "ex-wife and child" and created blood-stained caricatures of me shredding files about the Rwandan genocide claiming that I "can only live in in a world with no Tutsis." President Kagame himself told journalists that I "had been advocating the genocide for years," and members of his close staff even spent months preparing false testimonies of FDLR officers about how I provided them weapons. Fortunately, I was able to personally interview one of them before he was to return to Rwanda and hold a press conference. He obviously had no idea who I was, and once confronted with the truth, he eventually acknowledged that he was paid to make these detailed false claims about "Steve Hege."
    Despite these attacks, the government of Rwanda is fully aware of my objectivity as an investigator on the armed groups, including the FDLR. During previous mandates, although the Rwandan intelligence services were not entirely satisfied with our conclusions regarding the links between the FDLR and the political dissident Kayumba Nyamwasa, they had, at the time, respected my objective approach in systematically documenting the support networks of the Rwandan Hutu rebels, particularly in the 2011 final report, which did include links to other Rwandan dissidents. I have also cooperated with German prosecutors in the ongoing trial against the former president and vice president of the FDLR, and in 2006 and 2007 with the UN peacekeeping mission, I conducted numerous missions into the dense jungles of South Kivu to convince FDLR combatants to voluntarily disarm and return peacefully to their homes.
    But these types of false accusations—maybe not so hostile and personal— are to be expected with this type of work (investigating support to armed groups) particularly given that those violating the arms embargo obviously do not want this to be known, much less appear in an official document of the Security Council. In 2010 and 2011, I had already been accused by members of the Rwandan and Burundian political oppositions of supposedly being too sympathetic to their governments. It's simply the natural reflex to claim the alleged bias of an investigator against those who appear in the conclusions of a rigorous and independent investigation.
    Fortunately, diplomats are able to see beyond these frequent accusations against Group of Experts members, as despite Rwanda's repeated demands for my removal, no member of the sanctions committee of the Security Council ever asked me even a single question about my so-called "partiality."
    FM: How were your conclusions received by members states from the sanctions committee? Will the election of Rwanda to the Security Council affect the work/reports of the Group of Experts?
    SH: The Security Council was very supportive of our work, and the language of resolutions 2076 and 2078 reflect a strong consensus regarding the overwhelming nature of external backing to the M23 rebellion. Not only did we hold numerous meetings bilaterally and multilaterally with many Security Council members to discuss our methodology and findings, but engaged member states confirmed our findings on their own. The organogram in Annex 22 of the final report, which places Rwandan Minster of Defense James Kabarebe as the rebellion's supreme commander, is just one illustrative example of the information that many countries hold in addition to our findings and that of several other independent inquiries.
    From our perspective, it would of course be great if the sanctions committee immediately accepted our conclusions, but they do indeed thoroughly scrutinize our findings and attempt to corroborate them with their own information gathering. None of our reports alone would ever outweigh the internal reporting of a member state, particularly those who took unilateral measures in suspending aid to a development partner as important as Rwanda due to its blatant violations of the arms embargo. They may refer to our report publically, but important policy decisions are always based first and foremost on their own evidence base.
    Despite Rwanda's recent arrival to the Security Council, the Group's mandate had already been renewed, and a new six-member team appointed by the Secretary-General. However, any member of the Security Council can block candidates for sanctions as well as proposed members for future mandates of the Group of Experts, a fact Rwanda's mission to the UN has boasted about.
    About the photo: A map from the November 2012 report shows RDF and M23 infiltrations towards Masisi territory.

     

    -“The root cause of the Rwandan tragedy of 1994 is the long and past historical ethnic dominance of one minority ethnic group to the other majority ethnic group. Ignoring this reality is giving a black cheque for the Rwandan people’s future and deepening resentment, hostility and hatred between the two groups.”

    -« Ce dont j’ai le plus peur, c’est des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre ».

    -“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

    -“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.

    -“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

    READ MORE RECENT NEWS AND OPINIONS

    Popular Posts

    WebMD Health Channel - Sex & Relationships

    Love Lectures

    How We Made It In Africa – Insight into business in Africa

    David DeAngelo - Dating Questions For Men

    Christian Carter - Dating Questions For Women

    Women - The Huffington Post

    Recent Articles About Effective Communication Skills and Self Development