On the evening of 16th April, the story of Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa’s death was announced and went viral on social media the following day. Rujugiro, the fugitive financial kingpin of fraud and smuggling who was living in South Africa died of heart related complications at the age of 82.
The death of Rujugiro is a definitely terrible blow in the life of the struggling Anti-Rwanda groups which have largely depended on his endless financial support. The so-called Africa’s tobacco mogul was running a chain of businesses across Africa and Europe whose companies are mostly famous for tax evasion and smuggling.
It is exactly tax evasion that sent Rujugiro into an exile fleeing Rwanda back in 2007. Rujugiro as a famous agent of organized crimes raked a lot of money in serious misconducts often based on money laundering, fraud, drug smuggling and human trafficking. Although Rwanda had given him a home after the 1994 liberation struggle, it is a country that had resorted to enforcing accountability as mean to achieve a sustainable economy and would not entertain such nonsense.
In South Africa, where crime was rife and accountability was next to Zero, Rujugiro could not have found a better safe haven. There he found it easy to dive deeper into his schemes of organized crimes and worked directly with other anti-Rwanda individuals. Working with fellas like Kayumba Nyamwasa, a fugitive who is the terrorist in chief of RNC, his former closest associate Patrick Karegeya and others they all believed they would cause regime change in Kigali. It ended rather in tears.
While Kayumba Nyamwasa’s deal with Rujugiro which involved toppling a legitimate government in Kigali collapsed at the end of 2020, with P5-an armed wing of RNC- neutralized in DRC, people like David Himbara, Charles Kambanda, Eugene Gasana and other fugitives continued to fleece money out of him with promises that they will overturn government in Kigali through other means.
Now that Rujugiro is no more, the fate of RNC and other anti-Rwanda reactionaries who were banking on him to make a living in the west, is further doomed. The likes of Himbara, Gasana, Kambanda and others who live in Europe and America have been living mostly on social security funds provided by hosting countries but in reality, were very little. It is through Rujugiro dirty money that they managed to stay afloat and conduct hostile campaigns against Rwanda sometimes using an infamous online Radio like as “ITAHUKA” and other Youtube Channels.
Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa is dead and gone now but history will remember him as a controversial name that evoked business success, fraud, smuggling and terrorism in equal measure.
ellenkampire