State Funds Seen at Risk in Congo Presidential Election Campaign

(Bloomberg) -- Democratic Republic of Congo presidential-hopeful Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary’s appointments to his campaign-finance teams raise the risk state funds will be used to finance his election bid, two anti-graft groups said.

Shadary, the ruling-coalition candidate chosen by President Joseph Kabila to succeed him, is seeking to become the leader of the world’s biggest cobalt producer in a vote scheduled for Dec. 23. The 57-year-old former interior minister has been sanctioned by the European Union for his role in human-rights abuses.

Campaign teams that Shadary approved on Nov. 5 include officials who oversee entities from which “significant” public funds have disappeared over the past decade, London-based Global Witness and the Senegal-based Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa said in a joint statement.

“When a presidential candidate, who is subject to European sanctions, aligns himself with people who have run key institutions in a regime already accused of widespread corruption, then there is a huge risk that the line between public money and private political interests will become blurred during this election campaign,” Pete Jones of Global Witness said in the statement.

Click here to read a related article about Congo’s elections

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.