DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

DRC Opposition Seeks to Reopen Probe into $3 Billion Fraud

NEWS STORY

Source: VOA

By Nick Long

29 July 2015 - The Democratic Republic of Congo's biggest-ever corruption probe was called off without an official explanation, according to both a Congolese lawmaker and a government spokesman. Investigators were looking into fraud that may have cost the government more than $3 billion.

It was an investigation of alleged corruption over four years, from 2009 to 2013, in the customs service of Katanga province in the southeastern DRC. Katanga is the source of most of the DRC’s mineral exports and a powerhouse for the rest of the economy.

Last week, opposition lawmaker Mushizi Kizito called for a judicial inquiry into the alleged corruption to be restarted.

Speaking to VOA, he said the investigation was launched in 2013 after Communications Minister Lambert Mende heard accusations about the service.

Kizito said he does not know who denounced what exactly, but there was information indicating serious corruption and fraud and Mende sent a letter about this to the Justice Ministry.

Initiating an investigation

This led to the state prosecutor sending a team of investigators to Katanga in September 2013. According to Kizito, the team managed in only 10 days to recover some $700 million in unpaid customs and other taxes. He said the team was then recalled to Kinshasa, though, before it had examined most of the relevant documents for the period.

Mende confirmed to VOA he initiated the investigators’ mission to Katanga.

“I don’t know if they recovered any money”, he said. "They did identify large amounts of tax owed that had not been paid, but the mission was terminated abruptly, we don’t know by whom. Anyway, it would be worth reopening the inquiry.”

Kizito said the team recovered more than $700 million, but he added that was far less than the estimated total that was owed.

“It was estimated to be $3 billion,” he said. “Two-hundred-seventy-nine businesses were implicated — all kinds of businesses including companies in mining, beverages, services, and import export.”

That much money would have been a hefty proportion of the annual state budget of about $8 billion, Kizito added, suggesting there might have been fraud on the same scale in the other 10 provinces.

He cautioned that some of the estimated $3 billion might have been legal tax avoidance, through transfer pricing and other means, rather than illegal tax evasion.

Following the dollar

He said this was for prosecutors to establish, however, and he said it was a pity the DRC’s first ever-tax investigation of this scale had not been pursued.

A spokesman for Congolese organization, the African Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ASADHO), said it had access to details of the 2013 inquiry.

An ASADHO activist from Katanga, Francois Katende, told VOA he could confirm that money had been recovered from companies in Katanga.

He said he has a list of 10 companies that made payments after ASADHO publicized the affair.

He also suggested that most of the $700 million was recovered from just two companies.

As for who called a halt to the investigation in 2013, Kizito, Katende and minister Mende all said they do not know who was responsible for that decision.

It is not clear how much money there is left to recover, or what has happened to any money that was recovered. It also is not clear if anyone in the customs service has been punished for the alleged fraud.

As Obama Champions Democracy in Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo Descends into Political Chaos as its President Clings to Power

OPINION

Source: Amsterdam News (http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2015/jul/29/obama-champions-democracy-afri...)

29 July 2015 - As President Barack Obama sought to advance the principles of democracy on a historic trip to his father’s homeland of Kenya last week, the hope for a fair democratic process in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo appeared to be slowly eroding.

In developments that have caused alarm among human rights and pro-democracy activists, President Joseph Kabila of the DRC is brazenly moving to consolidate power in an apparent effort to stay in office past 2016, when his term expires. Mr. Kabila seems bent on leading his nation down this potentially destructive path, despite warnings from President Obama, who earlier this year spoke to Kabila and stressed the need for peaceful and credible elections in the DRC in 2016.

As President Obama’s trip to Kenya made clear, his primary focus is fostering strong economic ties between the U.S. and Africa, an objective that experts say is best achieved by ensuring that the U.S. has stable, democratic partners on the continent. Mr. Obama’s trip included attendance at the first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi and ended with an address to the Africa Union in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

In that context, Mel Foote, the president and CEO of the Constituency for Africa, said that Kabila’s power grab is troubling, particularly in a country that is strategically important because of its vast natural resources and the borders it shares with many African nations.

Mr. Foote, who is an advisor on Africa policy to the Obama administration and who traveled to the DRC three years ago, questioned whether the DRC would ever enjoy peace and security. “He’s trying to hold everybody down,” Foote said of Kabila.

Mr. Kabila’s actions come at a time when a new generation of leaders has emerged, including Moise Katumbi, who is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2016. The hugely popular governor of the Congo’s Katanga province, Katumbi is also a successful businessman who owns the renowned TZ Mazembe soccer team. Katumbi is most noted for his work to develop Katanga’s schools and mining sector.

Experts say that if the Congo descends into political turmoil, it may impact U.S. efforts to ensure peaceful elections in 14 other African countries preparing for elections next year.

“If the international community lets the DRC get away with some sort of shenanigans then our ability to positively influence outcomes throughout Africa certainly diminishes considerably,” said Dr. J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, told the Washington Free Beacon. Pham fears leaders in the region could take cues from a passive international response to Kabila.

Strong concern has also been expressed by Secretary of State John Kerry, who made the American position clear to Kabila in a conversation last year. “I believe it is clear to him that the United States of America feels very strongly, as do other people, that the constitutional process needs to be respected and adhered to,” Mr. Kerry said then.

Kabila has said he will obey the constitution. Still, he appears to be up to something. Experts say he is now instituting a policy known as decoupage in order to delay the election and possibly weaken political rivals.

The decoupage would divide the DRC’s provinces into smaller political subdivision, potentially weakening the political base of rivals like Katumbi. Moreover, the process would likely push national elections well past its 2016 schedule, assuring Kabila’s maintenance of power.

Political writers have called Kabila on the plan. “Congolese people at home and abroad are waiting. They already have an option and they are very much aware the decoupage is but a political gimmick targeting perceived political challengers. Therefore, whatever Kabila would [do] in his grand scheme aimed at Katumbi may have grave political ramifications,” writes Peter Adamu, a policy analyst for Zambia Reports in an opinion posted on AllAfrica.com.

Kabila has resorted to other heavy-handed tactics, including filing corruption and fraud charges against a list of more than a dozen officials. Though the Kabila administration has not publicized specifically who is named in the charges, Katumbi told Reuters that he would not be surprised if he is included.

The Kabila has also tried to pass a law that would require a national census that experts say would delay the elections for years. The plan was rejected by the legislature, but not before mass protests that resulted in the deaths of 40 protestors early this year.

Jason Stearns, a writer who has served on the United Nations group of experts on the Congo, says that Kabila could plunge his country into turmoil if he disregards the constitution. He said, “There is so much internal dissent around Kabila that if he stays in power, regardless of how he does that, it could provoke such an internal crisis it could go any number of routes.”

Chinese vice president meets DR Congo FM

NEWS STORY

Source: Xinhua

30 July 2015 - Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao met on Wednesday with DR Congo Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda.

Li said the relationship between China and DR Congo has sound development and the two countries support each other on the other's core interests and major concerns.

Li said China attaches great importance to its ties with DR Congo and is willing to expand win-win cooperation to promote bilateral ties to a new stage.

Calling DR Congo and China as good brothers and friends, Tshibanda appreciates China's sincere assistance to his country, expressing his willingness to strengthen mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation in more fields with China.

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RWANDA

Rwanda: Ex official declared wanted by Interpol

NEWS STORY

Source: APA

29 July 2015 - Interpol has issued a so-called red notice for the arrest of former Rwandan ambassador to Ethiopia, Protais Mitali who is wanted by the government in Kigali over corruption and embezzlement of public funds.The notice published on Interpol’s website on Wednesday states that, Mitali who also served as Rwanda’s Minister of Sports and Culture as well as the president of the opposition Liberal Party is being sought for theft of state funds.

Earlier in March, Mitali, resigned as president of the Liberal Party and fled to Europe after he was accused of embezzling Rwf50 Million ($72,000).

However, analysts argue that his case could be a politically motivated after falling out with President Paul Kagame.

The arrest warrant follows his indefinite expulsion from the Liberal Party (PL) for which he was president, and a lawsuit filed against him for misappropriation of party funds early this year.

According to the Police, Mitali had been requested to present himself to respond to the charges and facilitate investigations.

Police spokesperson Chief Superintendent of Police Celestin Twahirwa said that Mitali fled from his diplomatic post at the time he was being investigated.

"After being requested to return to facilitate investigations, he fled, leaving us with no option but to contact Interpol to issue a red notice," Twahirwa said.

Mitali is yet to respond to the request.

Some members of his former party alleged that following an internal audit conducted from January 2013 to June 2014, financial irregularities were exposed, fueling suspicion that Mitali has been withdrawing money which he never accounted for.

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BURUNDI

Post-election Burundi: The gloomy and the more optimistic scenarios - both make for sobering reading

OPINION

Source: Mail & Guardian Africa

By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi

A triumph president Pierre Nkurunziza could either seek to placate opponents, or deeply scarred by previous weeks, round on them.

29 July 2015 - THE controversial and violent process to determine who, barring unforeseen events will lead Burundi for the next five years, is now over. Despite media reports and claims by Western - and African - officials and numerous commentators that he was unwanted by the people of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza is to remain president.

Despite winning 69.41% of the votes cast, his victory has been dismissed by some as without credibility because the political environment was not conducive to free and fair elections.

Meanwhile reports indicate that, while turnout was 30% in the capital Bujumbura and in some peri-urban areas, in most rural areas it was well over 70%. And if one disregards the capital where bullets and explosions were reported, voting happened in a quiet and peaceful atmosphere. It makes one wonder if media coverage of “the crisis” did not mislead the world by presenting what happened in Bujumbura and peri-urban areas as representative of goings-on all over the country.

A rural hero

It suggests that, despite the much-publicised dismal record of his previous 10-year rule, Nkurunziza is popular among the rural masses. Their coming out to elect him in large numbers may as well have been evidence of their indifference to arguments that he was ineligible to stand.

In this, Burundi is not unique. There are numerous examples in Africa of sitting presidents insisting on contesting even when internal circumstances have seemed, at least to detached observers, to indicate that large numbers of their countrymen and women would rather they stepped down.

The contests have been followed by allegations of rigging alongside reports of peaceful and orderly voting and, subsequently, the incumbents winning handsomely in rural areas. Methinks we in media and the “analysis industry” often fall victim to our own prejudices and are easily seduced by the forceful arguments of the urban elite that we neglect to try and understand why rural people vote the way they do.

Not a solution

In Burundi as in other places where intra-elite quarrels and fights precede elections, the opposition boycotted the polls citing lack of trust in the electoral process and in the institutions superintending it, and unwillingness to legitimise the incumbent’s guaranteed victory.

And here as elsewhere, the incumbent, seemingly confident in his own popularity with the masses, betrayed no signs of caring who would or wouldn’t boycott, or if any potential contestants boycotted at all.

But Nkurunziza’s victory is not one he and his supporters should celebrate. There are several reasons for this. One very important one is that it is not a solution to any of the multiple problems bedevilling Burundi. One unhappy post-election scenario could see intra-elite fights intensify, leading to further internal turmoil.

Although main opposition leader Agathon Rwasa of the Amizero y’Abarundi coalition has called for a government of national unity, and although the ruling party, CNDD-FDD has agreed to engage on the issue, other opposition groups seem intent on doing whatever it takes to bring him down. A ke