President Joseph Kabila and his family in the Democratic Republic of Congo have created a personal economic empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the Bloomberg News agency reported Thursday. "Together the Kabilas have built a network of businesses that reaches into every corner of Congo's economy and has brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the family," the US news agency said five days before Kabila's mandate to rule expires.
"The sprawling network may help explain why the president is ignoring pleas by the (United States), the European Union and a majority of the Congolese people to hand over power next week." Bloomberg News stated that the report was based on a year-long investigation by three journalists into the Kabila family's business network in and beyond the mineral-rich yet dirt-poor central African country.
Backed by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the journalists carried out dozens of interviews in DR Congo, where Kabila came to power in wartime in 2001 after the assassination of his father by a bodyguard. The young soldier was later elected twice, but his constitutional mandate expires on December 20, and the results of the last poll in 2011 were rejected by the opposition, while observers decried massive fraud.
Bloomberg News said the journalists had amassed "hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate documents that show that (Kabila's) wife, two children and eight of his siblings control more than 120 permits to dig gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt and other minerals."