Kinshasa – An adviser to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo resigned on Friday after footage surfaced of him promising to facilitate a mining investment in exchange for a “percentage”.
On Thursday, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Swiss newspaper Le Temps published an investigation into Vidiye Tshimanga, a special adviser to Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi.
Video footage released by the publications showed Tshimanga promising two unidentified people, who claimed to represent a Hong Kong-based conglomerate interested in minerals, to protect their investment in the DRC.
“If we do business together, I will take my percentage of the investment,” Tshimanga said, according to the footage.
He also underlined his apparent close relationship with Tshisekedi, saying he had financed the latter’s presidential campaign. “If I ask him something, he gives,” Tshimanga said.
#DRC: Recently, Vidiye Tshimanga, a senior adviser to the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was secretly caught on camera brokering a shady mining deal.
This is an iota of what Tshisekedi, and his henchmen have opted to since they assumed the leadership. pic.twitter.com/AHtj8N6B6q
— Tristan Ngamije (@TristanNgamije) September 16, 2022
The footage provoked an uproar on social media in the central African nation, which is rich in minerals but poor and suffering from endemic corruption.
The DRC ranks 169th out of 180 nations on the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index by NGO Transparency International.
On Friday morning, without naming Tshimanga, the Congolese president’s office stated that anyone found to have broken the law or violated professional ethics would be punished.
It added that the fight against corruption was a priority for Tshisekedi, calling graft a “scourge that has impoverished this country for decades”.
Tshimanga himself said, later in the day, that he had resigned. However, he denied wrongdoing and said his words had been taken out of context.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Twitter/ @VidiyeTshimanga
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