Kagame accused him of funding rebel groups and of economic crimes, and tried to get him extradited from Uganda, leading to a rift between the two countries.
[3] Although he had supportative supervisors and did well, he did not see a future in the Post Office since the newly independent country favoured Burundians to Rwandan immigrants.
[4] He then took work with a petroleum storage company, followed by unsuccessful attempts to earn money as a baker and a gold trader.
[12] In 2008 a United Nations security report said he was one of the people funding the war in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
[5] Before leaving Rwanda in 2010, Ayabatwa was fighting charges of tax evasion in South Africa and the United Kingdom.
[1] After his departure the Rwandan authorities accused him of financing rebel groups who wanted to overthrow Kagame, and with tax evasion and other crimes.
[2] In 2011 the Rwandan police seized eight heavy trucks owned by the PTC's subsidiary of the eastern DRC, the Congo Tobacco Company.
[2] By 2013 Ayabatwa was head of a group of seven companies that employed 26,000 people making cement, tea, plastic shoes, beer, snack foods and cigarettes.
[2] In January 2013 he relinquished operational control of the Pan African Tobacco Group to his son, Paul Nkwaya Ayabatwa.
[2] He was featured in a Forbes Magazine article in 2014, which called him the richest tobacco manufacturer and trader in Africa.
[14] He set up the Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa Foundation (TRA), a charity, which funds youth training.
[3] In 2017 authorities in Rwanda declared Ayabatwa's assets in the country were "abandoned properties", which allowed them to be auctioned or taken over.
[7] Rwanda tried to persuade the Ugandan government to close the PTG's Meridian Tobacco Company subsidiary, which had operations in Arua, Uganda.
[2] Uganda refused to extradite Ayabatwa to Rwanda, which is said to have contributed to the breakdown in diplomatic relations between the two countries that lasted from February 2019 to January 2022.
In 2021 it published a report on efforts in East Africa to fight extremism, crime, corruption, and illegal trade.