Former President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila, and his family are accused by a large international media and NGO investigation released on Friday of having embezzled at least $ 138 million from state coffers in 5 years.

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 investigation, 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 office 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 …

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.

Source: News Agencies