DRC: head of Tshisekedi anti-corruption agency placed under provisional arrest warrant
A branch of Access Bank in Lagos, Nigeria.
CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons / Kaizenify
Text by: Pascal Mulegwa Follow
4 min
The coordinator of the Agency for the Prevention and Fight against Corruption (APLC), Ghislain Kikangala, was placed under a provisional arrest warrant on Friday, December 18, after several hours of hearing at the public prosecutor's office of the Court of Appeal of Kinshasa-Gombe.
They are suspected of abuse of power and extortion.
These acts were denounced last Friday by the lawyer of Arinze Kenechukwu Oswachale, general manager of the subsidiary of the Nigerian bank Access Bank.
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From our correspondent in Kinshasa,
By early evening, this Friday, December 18, the courthouse had already emptied.
But Ghislain Kikangala had not yet convinced the Advocate General, Yves Mwepu Ilunga, who had summoned him.
Of the three people expected, Ghislain Kikangala was the only one to respond to the invitation from the prosecution this afternoon.
His two "
operations officers
", who appear in a video of the bank
collecting in cash US $ 30,000
at late hours on December 10, did not respond.
"
They fled
", according to a judicial source.
Another source close to the case said that they sent their lawyers to the prosecution "
to say that they have been sent on a mission to the province of Kongo Central
", which borders Kinshasa.
Ghislain Kikangala, a Brussels lawyer close to the presidential family, was heard for long hours on the skills of his establishment, created by President Félix Tshisekedi in March 2020 to track down “
financial delinquency
” in the DRC.
Long before responding to the summons, he had already spoken in a television program in which he said that his two operations managers did not have mission orders to collect 30,000 of the 50,000 US dollars required. by his agency with Arinze Kenechukwu Oswachale, whose bank was accused of money laundering.
A case that had been revealed by a whistleblower,
the former banker Israel Kaseya
.
He had spent long months in prison before being released.
► To read also: DRC: the former banker of Access Bank Israel Kaseya was acquitted and released
The presidency announced investigations into these facts.
"
If they are true, they are condemnable and expose their authors to the rigor of the law,
" the statement said.
The competences of the APLC divide the anti-corruption NGOs.
When Chouna Lomponda, spokesperson for the agency, affirms that she is entitled to receive a deposit, Jean-Jacques Lumumba, coordinator of UNIS, the pan-African anti-corruption network, contradicts: "
I have zero part read in the ordinance that the agency has this right to fix or collect any sum of money (…).
I believe that they have committed a serious fault which deserves to be sanctioned by justice,
”he told RFI.
This whistleblower raised "
serious problems in the way of recruiting people
" within the APLC.
The Congolese Association for Access to Justice (ACAJ) said in a press release "
deeply concerned
" by the actions of the anti-corruption agency.
The NGO no longer has any doubts: the acts carried out constitute "
harassment the sole purpose of which was to take the money
" from the Managing Director of Access Bank.
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DRC
Corruption
Felix Tshisekedi
On the same subject
DRC: Former Access Bank Israel Kaseya acquitted and released
DRC: Access Bank accuses the Anti-Corruption Agency of dubious methods