De Standaard gets to work on the largest data breach ever…

The Congo Hold-up international investigation reveals how the BGFI bank was used to plunder the Democratic Republic of Congo’s natural resources and treasury. With the proceeds of that looting, the entourage of former president Joseph Kabila financed its domestic and foreign wealth. But it didn’t stop there.

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The BGFI bank was the hub of a corrupt system that kept Joseph Kabila’s clan afloat. The banking group already had a murky history as the linchpin in corrupt deals by African autocrats and European corporations. But Congo Hold-up proves that it was also a conduit for those who wanted to influence Kabila: from international businessmen to Chinese state-owned companies involved in huge mining ventures.

The bank also housed Belgians who helped the former president transfer money, companies suspected of financing Hezbollah and a Belgian who quietly enriched himself on the hood of Congolese agricultural development.

• Read also: How the clan Kabila stole 122 million from the Congolese state

In an unreleased research alliance, the media network European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) and its media partners have teamed up with a group of non-profit research groups led by the Plateforme pour la protection des lanceurs d’alerte en Afrique (PPLAAF). Together, they have been investigating Congo Hold-Up’s documents for more than six months.

The data breach, which came into the hands of PPLAAF and the French investigative site Mediapart, consists of more than 3.5 million internal BGFI documents, along with millions of transactions over a period of about ten years.

Laying in the coming weeks The standard and its partners exposed the networks that were embezzling and transferring money through the bank. We show who the money went to, what it was spent on and how international banks failed to stop those dubious flows of money.

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