Court acquits former university vice-chancellor

Professor Egide Karuranga, the former vice-chancellor of the now-defunct University of Kibungo has been acquitted by the Ngoma district-based Intermediate Court on charges related to financial mismanagement.

After spending nine months in the Nyarugenge prison following his arrest by the Rwanda Investigation Bureau in July 2020, the court ordered Karuranga’s immediate release.

The former vice-chancellor, who became head of the university in 2017, was accused of nepotism and mismanagement of the university’s finances, which included failure to account for how the university spent over RWF700 million (more than US$730,000) between 2018 and 2019.

The university was closed in 2020 due to its financial woes.

Inadequate proof of wrongdoing

The Ngoma Intermediate Court, based in Ngoma district in Eastern Province, ruled in favour of Karuranga, due to inadequate proof that he committed the crimes presented by the prosecution.

The court ruled that Karuranga, who was accused of leading the university into making losses, worked with the university’s board of directors, which backed all the activities undertaken by the university management. The backing by the board, absolved Karuranga, the court ruled.

Prior to his appointment as the University of Kibungo’s vice-chancellor, Karuranga lived in Canada where he taught international business management at Laval University’s faculty of business administration as an associate professor.

He was also a visiting lecturer at the Institut Commercial de Nancy (which became ICN Business School) in France and the Reginald F Lewis School of Business, Law and Agriculture in the US.

Karuranga and Dr Pierre-Damien Habumuremyi, the former prime minister of Rwanda, who was previously the vice-chancellor of the Christian University of Rwanda, were arrested during the same time in 2020.

Habumuremyi was later found guilty of issuing cheques that bounced. He was sentenced to three years in jail and ordered to pay RWF892.2 million in fines.

Several private universities in Rwanda were closed in 2020 for failing to meet quality standards, and other administrative and financial problems.