Congo hold-up: Joseph Kabila accused of embezzling $ 138 million in the DRC

Published on : 11/19/2021 – 6:03 PM

An investigation by international media and NGOs affirms Friday, November 19 that the former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Joseph Kabila and his family “siphoned” in five years at least 138 million dollars of the coffers of the State with the complicity of a bank.

This survey, entitled “Congo hold-up”, is based on 3.5 million confidential bank documents, obtained by the French online investigative media Mediapart and the NGO Platform for the Protection of Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF), specifies Mediapart.

These data were analyzed for six months by 19 international media and five NGOs, coordinated by the European Investigative collaborations (EIC) network, adds the media which promises to detail in the coming days the operation of these diversions operated between 2013 and 2018.

In a press release, the communication service of Joseph Kabila described the conclusions of this investigation as “false accusations” and “delaying tactics”, deploring an “unjustified relentlessness of certain powers hidden behind these media”.

Complicity of the BGFI bank

The 138 million dollars that this investigation claims to have traced were diverted “with the complicity of the bank BGFI RDC” (subsidiary in the DRC of the banking group BGFIBank based in Gabon), in which relatives of Joseph Kabila had interests and responsibilities, “in particular through a front company installed in a garage”.

According to the investigation, this company served as a “vehicle for the corruption of the regime” and to “levy a sort of ‘Kabila tax’ from several Congolese public institutions and enterprises”: the Central Bank, the mining company Gecamines, the National Assembly, the electoral commission, the transport and ports company, the road maintenance fund …

Asked in Kinshasa by AFP, the bank had not yet reacted late Friday afternoon.

“One of the most shocking examples concerns the money of the roads, of which the DRC is sorely lacking”, estimates Mediapart which puts in parallel “the indecent fortune” which would have accumulated the Kabila family and the state of the DRC which , “despite its immense mineral resources (…) is the 6th poorest country in the world “.

“More than 70% of Congolese survive on less than two dollars a day”, adds the article, “half of the population does not have access to drinking water and 90% does not have electricity”.

The authors of the survey add that they tried to obtain answers from those implicated in this alleged state “hold-up” but, they say, “most of them did not respond.”

Joseph Kabila came to power at the age of 29, in January 2001, after the assassination of his father Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who in 1997 overthrew the former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. He was president until January 2019, when the current head of state Félix Tshisekedi succeeded him.

With AFP