Dear Supporter,

Despite undergoing its first peaceful transfer of power since independence six decades ago, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is pinning its hopes for justice, democracy, and popular sovereignty on an electoral bureaucracy that has allegedly been co-opted time and again for private gain, exacerbating political tensions.

The Sentry’s latest report, “Fingerprints and Money Trails: DRC’s Election Chief Cuts Deals on Both Ends of the 2018 Vote,” exposes an episode of deal-making among political insiders at the electoral commission, or Commission électorale nationale indépendante (CENI), an institution critical in determining who votes and who takes power. The report shows the extent to which the CENI remains vulnerable to corruption and conflicts of interest, finding that:

• Before the landmark 2018 vote, outgoing CENI President Corneille Nangaa awarded part of a lucrative no-bid services contract to a group of his future business associates, including a candidate in that year’s parliamentary elections. Although procurement authorities authorized the contract, critics have long said that the CENI’s repeated sole-source purchasing is not legally sound and risks undermining political actors’ confidence in the electoral process.
• After announcing the results of the election, Nangaa formed a corporate venture with several of the same individuals to explore for minerals in resource-rich Haut-Katanga province.
• According to one of the people involved, the investors dropped their plans after it became widely known that the US had imposed financial sanctions on Nangaa over his alleged role in embezzlement and bribery, underscoring the effect that international sanctions programs can have on individuals credibly suspected of undermining the DRC’s fragile democracy.

The evidence of impropriety at the CENI found by Sentry investigators highlights a wider system of state capture that has long plagued the DRC, creating incentives for leaders to cling to power and hijack state institutions for their own benefit and for that of their foreign and domestic facilitators.

Sincerely,

Sasha Lezhnev
Deputy Director of Policy