NGO files Rwanda genocide lawsuit against French central bank

French President Emmanuel Macron attends a Coalition of the Willing meeting by video conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris on December 11, 2025. [AFP]

A group representing victims of the Rwanda genocide has filed a legal complaint in France accusing the French central bank of making money transfers that enabled the 1994 killings, it said Thursday.

The Collective of Civil Parties of Rwanda (CPCR), in their complaint submitted last week, accused the Banque de France of not freezing the account of the National Bank of Rwanda, which made payments during the massacres, according to the document seen by AFP.

They also allege it approved money transfers to the Rwandan central bank worth a total of 3.17 million francs (more than $570,000 at today's rates). It was not immediately clear who owned the accounts the money came from.

The French central bank said it had not had time to conduct a thorough search of its archives, but had so far found "no trace of the alleged transfers". It added that, under bank regulations, most paperwork was usually destroyed after 10 years.

The genocide started in April 1994 after Rwanda's president Juvenal Habyarimana, from the Hutu majority, was killed when his aircraft was shot down over Kigali.

From April 7 to July 4 around 800,000 people were killed, mostly from the Tutsi minority, along with some moderate Hutus, in one of the 20th century's worst atrocities.

The United Nations on May 17 imposed an arms embargo on the sale or supply of arms to Rwanda.

"There were seven money transfers between May 5 and July 17, 1994, in the midst of the genocide of the Tutsis, from the National Bank of Rwanda to service providers. These were relatively large sums," CPCR co-founder Alain Gauthier told AFP.

One of the recipients was French company Alcatel, suspected of having provided the Rwandan authorities at the time with satellite phones to maintain international communications.

The French central bank "must have known", he added.

The CPCR, as well as two other organisations called Sherpa and Ibuka France, have also accused French banking group BNP Paribas of helping fund weapons for Hutu militias.

They allege BNP authorised the transfer of $1.3 million to the regime in June 1994, after the UN weapons embargo. An inquiry has been underway since 2017, Sherpa said.

Rwanda under President Paul Kagame has on occasion accused Paris of not being willing to extradite genocide suspects or bring them to justice.

But France has tried and convicted several Rwandans since the first trial on French soil linked to the genocide in 2014.

Relations between the two countries have also warmed considerably since a historians' report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and released in 2021 recognised France's "overwhelming" responsibilities in failing to halt the massacres, having backed a genocidal regime.