A complaint has been filed against the Banque de France, the country’s central bank, for having authorised wire transfers that allegedly facilitated the arming of Hutu forces during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Issued on: 11/12/2025 - RFI
A Rwandan boy covers his face against the stench of the bodies of victims of the genocide, 19 July, 1994. Reuters - CORINNE DUFKA
The complaint accusing the Bank of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity was filed on 4 December with the senior investigating judge at the crimes against humanity division of the Paris judicial tribunal, Radio France and the Libération newspaper revealed on Thursday.
It aims to establish whether the French central bank failed in its obligations to respect a United Nations-imposed embargo on arms sales to Rwanda introduced on 17 May 1994, several weeks after the genocide began on 7 April.
During a 100-day period between April and July 1994, around 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were massacred by Hutu extremists.
Seven transfers
According to the plaintiffs – the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) and its founders Alain Gauthier and Dafroza Mukarumongi – not only did the Bank of France fail to freeze the account of the National Bank of Rwanda, it carried out seven transfers in its favour, for a total amount of 3.17 million francs (approximately €486,000).
The transfers took place between 5 May and 1 August, 1994.
French company Alcatel, one of the beneficiaries, is suspected of having supplied communications equipment to the Rwandan authorities. According to documents cited in the complaint, a payment amounting to 435,000 francs was made in favour of Alcatel on 5 May, 1994.
Several witness statements attest that the payment was intended for the purchase of satellite telephones, considered important equipment by the Rwandan interim government in order to maintain international communications.
Other transfers were sent to Rwandan diplomatic missions in Ethiopia, South Africa and Egypt and may have been used to purchase weapons, according to Libération.
"The Tutsi genocide was not only the work of those who killed with machetes. It was made possible by a multitude of white-collar criminals who, comfortably seated in their offices, authorised transfers and signed off on operations with administrative banality, far from the bloodshed but necessary to the genocidal machine," said the CPCR’s lawyers Matilda Ferey and Joseph Breham, in a statement.
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The complaint accusing the Bank of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity was filed on 4 December with the senior investigating judge at the crimes against humanity division of the Paris judicial tribunal, Radio France and the Libération newspaper revealed on Thursday.
It aims to establish whether the French central bank failed in its obligations to respect a United Nations-imposed embargo on arms sales to Rwanda introduced on 17 May 1994, several weeks after the genocide began on 7 April.
During a 100-day period between April and July 1994, around 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were massacred by Hutu extremists.
Seven transfers
According to the plaintiffs – the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) and its founders Alain Gauthier and Dafroza Mukarumongi – not only did the Bank of France fail to freeze the account of the National Bank of Rwanda, it carried out seven transfers in its favour, for a total amount of 3.17 million francs (approximately €486,000).
The transfers took place between 5 May and 1 August, 1994.
French company Alcatel, one of the beneficiaries, is suspected of having supplied communications equipment to the Rwandan authorities. According to documents cited in the complaint, a payment amounting to 435,000 francs was made in favour of Alcatel on 5 May, 1994.
Several witness statements attest that the payment was intended for the purchase of satellite telephones, considered important equipment by the Rwandan interim government in order to maintain international communications.
Other transfers were sent to Rwandan diplomatic missions in Ethiopia, South Africa and Egypt and may have been used to purchase weapons, according to Libération.
"The Tutsi genocide was not only the work of those who killed with machetes. It was made possible by a multitude of white-collar criminals who, comfortably seated in their offices, authorised transfers and signed off on operations with administrative banality, far from the bloodshed but necessary to the genocidal machine," said the CPCR’s lawyers Matilda Ferey and Joseph Breham, in a statement.
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'The whole world knew'
The complaint draws on documentation compiled in 1996 by two UN Development Programme (UNDP) experts, including former Belgian senator Pierre Galland, who recorded the transfers, amounts and dates.
When the Hutu-led interim government fled Rwanda in early July, Galland told Libération it "left behind many documents showing that donors had carried out transfers without sufficient oversight. The funds allowed the Rwandan army and the perpetrators of the genocide to operate. Our mission was to trace all those transfers".
Some transfers may also have directly funded weapons purchases.
“At the time when the Bank of France facilitated these seven transactions on behalf of the génocidaires, it likely had procedures and tools in place that should have alerted it," said Austin Kathi Lynn, founder of the Conflict Awareness Project, who investigated arms trafficking immediately after the genocide.
"Given the extensive media coverage of the Rwandan genocide, the control exercised by an unconstitutional interim government over the Rwandan state’s bank accounts, and the arms embargo imposed on Rwanda, certain transactions involving the génocidaires should have been flagged as potentially illegal.”
The plaintiffs argue that the Bank of France could not have been unaware of the context.
“Hutu militants were carrying out systematic extermination wherever they could – in churches, in schools," Alain Gauthier told Radio France. "The whole world knew. How could the Bank of France and French authorities not have known?”
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'No trace of transfers'
The Bank of France told Libération that it had only been able to carry out "summary searches" given the "particularly short" deadline since the complaint was filed.
"At this stage, we have found no trace of the transfers mentioned," it said, adding that all account documents have to be destroyed after a period of 10 years, in line with banking regulations.
Gauthier, who has spent decades documenting the involvement of French banks in the genocide, justified the delay in filing the complaint.
“[It] may seem belated, because it took us a long time to realise that the Bank of France could also be prosecuted for having used funds from the Bank of Rwanda for the purchase of weapons.”
He also criticised the slow pace of justice, noting that a 2017 complaint against BNP Paribas for similar transfers remains unresolved.
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