Public fuel probe starts next week

THE parliamentary probe committee set up last week to investigate cases of public fuel mismanagement kicks off next week, MP Specioza Mukandutiye, has said. The House of Deputies’ seven-member team will take 15 working days to accomplish the task. The probe will be launched into the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Minicom) just days after the ministry has been put under Monique Nsanzabaganwa, who was on Friday named as Protais Mitali’s replacement. Mitali was named the Minister of Youth, a portfolio which was separated from Sports and Culture ministry, during last Friday’s cabinet reshuffle. In her 2006 report, Auditor General Evelyn Kamagaju last week accused Minicom of gross mismanagement of strategic fuel reserves, and failure to keep track of stock movements. Mukandutiye, who is the vice president of the probe team, said they would get down to work after a meeting bringing together all the ad hoc commission members. The inquiry is headed by MP Juvenal Nkusi, the chairman of the Lower House’s Standing Committee on Economic Affairs. We shall meet next week to discuss how we will conduct the probe, Mukandutiye said. The inquiry will look into all cases of mismanagement of the country’s fuel reserves, with members visiting all public fuel reserve facilities, and interviewing individuals and company officials implicated in the AG’s report. Lawmakers decided to institute the inquiry after it appeared that billions of taxpayers’ money could be ending up in people’s pockets through embezzlement or irresponsibility on the part of Minicom officials charged with managing the reserves. The AG’s report implicated the ministry for failing to keep records of the existing stock of oil reserves and of unserviced loans that were given to fuel dealers in the previous years. In her report, Kamagaju pointed to exorbitant levels of irregularities in public fuel management which, if not addressed urgently, could ruin the stocks. For instance, the report indicates that fuel dealers were unduly given interest free business loans for long periods and there was no provision for guarantee in the agreements with dealers which Government could revert to in the event of failure to refund the fuel loaned. The AG also gave several examples of credit transactions in which businessmen were allocated public fuel, promising to pay within a specific period of time, but never repaid, or issued bad cheques. Some of the cases had not been discovered by government officials until her audit period (August, 2007), she said. She also cited a case of a central bank account on which proceeds from sales of a Japanese fuel grant to the Government had been deposited (Frw1, 438,436,435) but that money was not included in Minicom’s financial statements. The report further indicates that no bank reconciliations were prepaid during the fuel transaction deals in 2006 and it is not possible for Minicom to know whether all banked cheques are paid.Ends

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Public fuel probe starts next week