Where did the 400,000 dollars received by the Congolese Ministry of Education for the organization of the first African school football championship in the DRC go? The General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) denounces an alleged embezzlement.
© Damien Glaz
© Damien Glaz
Second largest nation in Africa following Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) can only be confronted with situations of pharaonic magnitude. The corruption wouldn’t she be an exception to this rule? Congolese honor is perhaps safe, if we consider that the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) has sufficient prerogatives to investigate and denounce…
Big fish
Another big fish has just been caught by this Congolese structure which provides technical assistance to the Minister of Finance, Budget and Public Portfolio. On March 19, the IGF blacklisted the Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Technical Education (EPST), led by Tony Mwaba, for the alleged embezzlement of nearly $400,000 allocated to the organization of the first school football championship in Africa.
For the establishment, in Kinshasa, of this competition initiated by the International Football Federation (Fifa), the Congolese State had released more than a million dollars. And a good part of the staffing of the Ministry of EPST seems to have evaporated. The alleged fraud techniques are as well known as they are ancestral…
Two examples are caricatural. The first concerns the public transit company Transco. Finance inspectors reportedly discovered that “of an alleged payment of $120,000 to Transco for the rental of the buses, only $16,000 was actually given to the carrier.”
The second example concerns the printing of T-shirts intended for pupils in Kinshasa invited to follow the matches. According to the General Inspectorate of Finance, “the invoices presented were multiplied by ten by agents of the Ministry of EPST”. The head of the IGF Jules Alingete sent the file to the prosecution.
“Hardness”?
In this country where political tensions are commonplace, the director of cabinet of the Minister of EPST, Eddy Mwanzo, evokes a “relentlessness” and “undoubtedly biased conclusions” of the head of the IGF who, according to him, would have , a “hidden agenda” once morest the Minister of Education and even once morest “President Félix Tshisekedi’s policy of free primary education”. And the director of cabinet to announce in turn his intention to take legal action…
To read DRC – Alingete once morest Izemengia Nsaa-Nsaa: should spending ministers be prosecuted?
The DRC occupies the 169th place out of 180 countries in the 2021 ranking of Transparency International and the opaque redistribution of public funds is found in very different fields, in particular that of Health. Unscrupulous, some officials would have fattened up just as much in the fight once morest the Covid-19 epidemic as in the response to the Ebola virus. While the DRC is reputed to be advantaged in terms of natural resources, the majority of the population lives on less than $1.90 a day…
