How to rob a country using a bank

#CongoHoldUp, the largest leak from the African continent to date, reveals how the commercial bank BGFIBank has been used to plunder the Democratic Republic of Congo’s public funds and natural resources, largely for the enrichment of former President Joseph Kabila’s inner circle.

The same bank group, with a troubled history of sheltering corrupt deals involving African autocrats and European companies, served as a hub for those seeking to unduly influence the then-president, including Chinese state-owned companies involved in massive mining ventures in the DRC. BGFIBank gave shady networks of businessmen, politicians, alleged Hezbollah financiers and others, access to the international banking system.

In an unprecedented alliance for research in the public interest, EIC and its media partners have teamed up with a group of non-profit research organisations led by PPLAAF (all listed below). They researched together the Congo Hold-Up documents for six months. Then media and NGOs performed fact-checking, confrontation and wrote their reports independently.

The Congo Hold-Up leak is composed of over 3.5 million internal documents from the BGFIBank, including bank statements, emails, contracts, bills and corporate records. The documents also include details of millions of banking transactions.

Follow the Congo Hold-Up stories during the next weeks. They will expose in great detail the tricks used by the BGFIBank and its clients to cover up endemic corruption and embezzlement of public money in the DRC, and how international banks failed to prevent such dubious money flows.