$530 Million gone missing: Tracing Gécamines’ tax advances

During former President Joseph Kabila’s second term, the state-owned mining company Gécamines paid more than half a billion dollars in tax advances into accounts at the Central Bank of Congo. But the head of the Inspectorate General of Finance (IGF) has raised serious doubts about whether the money ever reached the national treasury—or what it was actually used for.

“The Central Bank has never, to this day, provided us with the slightest proof that this money landed in the Treasury’s accounts,” said Jules Alingete, the IGF chief, in interviews with Mediapart and RFI, members of the Congo Hold-up consortium.
According to the Finance Ministry— which should have been the recipient of the funds— “there’s never been any proof that the money arrived,” Alingete added.

A new investigation by Resource Matters retraces these multiple advances made since 2012, reinforcing the IGF’s suspicions of possible embezzlement of public funds. These revelations, part of the Congo Hold-up probe, are based on a leak of roughly 3.5 million documents from BGFI Bank, obtained by the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) and Mediapart, and analyzed by a consortium of 19 media outlets and 5 NGOs.

Drawing on these documents, Resource Matters—working with Mediapart, L’Orient-Le Jour, RFI, The Sentry, and De Standaard—was able to partly trace both the origin of the money used by Gécamines to make the advances, and where it ended up.

For instance, $30 million in advances paid by Gécamines in 2012 were linked to the organization of the Francophonie Summit. Another $8 million, advanced in 2015, was withdrawn in cash from BGFI Bank in Kinshasa by a proxy for the Tajeddine family—Lebanese businessmen under U.S. sanctions for financing Hezbollah. One other tax advance was transferred directly into the account of Sud Oil, a company tied to Kabila’s network, without even passing through the Central Bank.

It also emerged that the Finance Ministry retroactively validated the receipt of such funds—even when there was no actual proof. Albert Yuma’s role deserves special attention: at the time, he was not only CEO of Gécamines, but also a Director and Coordinator of the Audit Committee at the Central Bank, responsible for overseeing these very transactions.

The investigation revealed a recurring pattern: the Congolese state repeatedly demanded huge sums from Gécamines—its sole shareholder—immediately after the company struck lucrative deals with international investors such as China Molybdenum, Glencore, and Eurasian Resources Group. This deprived Gécamines of the means to implement its own revival strategy in the mining sector and worsened its already fragile finances, leaving it unable to repay its mounting debts.

“The IGF must make public the findings of its investigation,” said Jean Claude Mputu, Deputy Director of Resource Matters. “If these allegations are confirmed, those responsible must be held to account, and the money returned to the state and to Gécamines.”

Based on these findings, Resource Matters recommends that the Congolese government:

• Create a special inquiry commission to trace the missing $530 million.
• Publish the IGF’s findings on Gécamines’ ability to account for the tax advances.
• For any advances not credited to the Treasury, order an audit—together with all commercial banks involved—to determine the final use of the funds.
• Submit all evidence, for and against, to judicial authorities to enable prosecution of any suspected embezzlement.
• Launch a judicial investigation into the persion of $8 million in tax advances withdrawn in cash from BGFI.
• Clarify Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) reporting rules to capture actual cash flows rather than mere accounting entries.
• Ensure faster publication of EITI reports so that data on payments and revenues becomes available shortly after transactions occur.
• Systematically publish the financial statements of state-owned enterprises.
• Fully implement the ISYS-REGIES reform to share real-time information on tax payments with all public finance stakeholders.
• Clearly legislate on the practice of tax advances to make it transparent and compliant with modern public finance standards.

— Resource Matters