March 11 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Attorney General of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has finally decided to open an investigation into the complaint by the Congolese State Financial Auditor, which has demanded 16,000 million euros from China after accusing the Government of Beijing of breaches of the infrastructure agreement in exchange for the exploitation of minerals signed by both countries in 2008.
In what is known as the Sicomines case, the agreement specifically required Chinese state-owned companies Sinohydro Corp (Engineering) and China Railway Group Limited (Railways) to build roads and hospitals in exchange for a 68% stake in Sicomines. , a cobalt and copper joint venture with Congo’s state-owned mining company, Gecamines.
The report presented by the Auditor estimates that the country has not received adequate compensation from China for the exploitation of its copper and cobalt reserves.
According to the document, collected last month by Bloomberg, the Chinese partners have disbursed only about 820 million euros in infrastructure financing over the last 14 years in works that “for the most part have not had a visible impact on the population”.
In this sense, and in a response statement, Sicomines questioned “both the competence of the Auditor” for these cases “as well as the procedure followed” in an investigation that, in the opinion of the company, supposes a “violation of their rights”, picks up on his Twitter account.
The report “ignores the mechanism put in place by the DRC through the Collaboration Agreement and the rights granted to Sicomines, and in particular their right to be attended” in this procedure, “ultimately damaging the interests of the country and the people Congolese”.
Thus, Sicomines will begin an evaluation procedure with a view to undertaking “actions to take to protect their rights” before recalling that the DRC “is a State of law where the right to defense is enshrined and guaranteed by the Constitution.
At this time, the Prosecutor’s Office is only interested in the 820 million euros disbursed so far, which in its opinion “is too much money to correspond to the small number of infrastructures” built so far, in a case that it is studying, for now, as an “alleged misappropriation of public funds”.
For the prosecutor, the country has ended up “overpaying” for some “unfinished or not even executed” work, while China has received in full everything agreed with the DRC. “Everything leads to presume embezzlement,” says Attorney General Robert Kumbu in a statement picked up by Radio France Internationale (RFI).
