Rwanda’s Investigation Bureau has arrested three top officials from the Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board, as well as four businessmen, for alleged corruption and abuse of power.
The trio, Augustin Rwomushana, John Kanyangira, and Richard Niyongabo, are being held in Kigali without a specific date of arrest.
It was unclear whether the officials were involved in the illegal trafficking of minerals from the resource-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where Rwanda is accused of assisting anti-government forces in syphoning off its neighbour’s vast veins of critical minerals.
Kanyangira was in charge of traceability on the board, which is responsible for mining regulation, while Niyongabo was in charge of mining and Rwomushana was in charge of strategy and the minerals market.
“They were arrested along with four businessmen suspected to be accomplices in crimes of corruption, abusing power entrusted to them by using their offices for their personal interests, unlawfully amassing wealth and money laundering,” the bureau’s statement said.
The announcement comes after the European Union sanctioned the board’s head, Francis Kamanzi, in March over Rwanda’s support for the M23 armed group.
Kamanzi, who is accused of leveraging the violence to illegally extract and trade mineral resources in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, has had his assets frozen and is barred from entering the EU.
According to a report by United Nations experts, Kigali maintains de facto control over the M23 and has 4,000 Rwandan troops in the DRC to support the armed group.
The DRC accuses Rwanda of supporting the M23 in order to steal valuable minerals such as gold and coltan from the country’s restive east.
Rwanda denies that it provides military support to the M23.
However, it maintains that it faces a persistent threat from armed fighters in the DRC’s east, who are linked to ethnic Hutus involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
