Burundian anti-graft official murdered

BUJUMBURA (AFP) — A senior Burundian anti-corruption official was murdered overnight and his house ransacked by unknown attackers, police said Thursday.

Ernest Manirumva, the deputy chief of the Anti-corruption and Economic Malpractice Observatory (OLUCOME), was stabbed to death at his home in the capital Bujumbura.

Deputy police chief Gervais Ndirakobuca said the killing was not "an ordinary crime during a robbery."

"His house was ransacked and his office broken into," he added.

The observatory team has in recent years unearthed several graft schemes, among them the fraudulent sale of the presidential jet in 2006 in an incident that led to the sacking of the then finance minister.

However OLUCOME's chief Gabriel Rufyiri was jailed for four months after he denounced the improper sale of the aircraft.

The watchdog also blew the whistle on double billing of oil imports, resulting in the imprisonment of the Central Bank chief and forcing another finance minister to flee into exile in 2007.

"We are shocked by the cold-blooded murder of our deputy president. We are convinced that this his assassination is linked to the work he was doing," the team's spokesman Richard Ntawe told AFP.

"He was working on sensitive cases involving public procurement and he had received death threats like all other OLUCOME officials," he added.

Ntawe explained that "corruption has reached high level in recent years and nothing has been done to end it. The corrupt are very powerful."