A pair of blockbuster investigations have been published this month by separate organizations in France and the United States that detail how millions of dollars were illicitly siphoned out of the country by the former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila and his allies, including millions from Chinese entities connected with the $6 billion Sicomines mining deal in 2007.
One report was produced by a consortium led by The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, a Paris-based anti-corruption group known as Pplaaf, and the French news site Mediapart. The other was led by the Washington, D.C.-based group called The Sentry, an organization funded by actor George Clooney that tracks illicit money flows and corruption. Both draw on the findings from more than 3.5 million leaked transaction records spanning a decade from the Gabon-based bank BGFIBank’s Congolese subsidiary in Kinshasa.
