{"id":49431,"date":"2021-10-29T10:19:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T10:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=49431"},"modified":"2021-12-01T12:36:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:36:38","slug":"democratic-republic-of-congo-minister-implicated-in-illegal-forest-concessions-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/press\/49431\/democratic-republic-of-congo-minister-implicated-in-illegal-forest-concessions-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Republic of Congo Minister Implicated in Illegal Forest Concessions Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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STOP THE IMMINENT THREAT TO THE CONGO BASIN RAINFOREST<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

Kinshasa, 29 October<\/strong>: Greenpeace has learned that the Congolese Vice-Prime Minister and Environment Minister currently presenting her country as the world’s carbon offsetting solution was promoting six illegal forest “conservation” concessions the size of the Bahamas only days before President Felix Tshisekedi ordered<\/a> them suspended, in the run-up to COP26.  On 13 September, Minister Eve Bazaiba signed a mission order for seven members of her ministry to accompany a team of the firm Tradelink in the province of Tshopo. Her own constituency of Basoko featured on the itinerary.<\/p>\n\n

Tradelink<\/a> is an obscure import\/export firm which in September 2020 was illegally awarded six so-called \u201cconservation concessions\u201d covering 1,376,375 ha. Its only known shareholder is a Belgian expatriate who made his career in mining, timber and oil.<\/p>\n\n

“The granting of these concessions would appear to be the biggest \u201chandover\u201d of Congolese territory to Belgian interests since independence,” said Ir\u00e8ne Wabiwa Betoko, head of the Greenpeace Africa campaign for the Congo Basin forest.  “By providing her support to this scam, the minister has demonstrated her contempt for both Congolese law and civil society, as well as the commitments of President Tshisekedi to the donor countries he is currently courting.”<\/p>\n\n

At the moment Minister Eve Bazaiba signed her order, she had known about the Tradelink affair for months: on June 9, civil society filed an administrative appeal<\/a> seeking the cancellation of the contracts. Her signature came three days after the expiry of the legal deadline for responding to it.<\/p>\n\n

The company\u2019s fans had by that time significantly dwindled: the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) had confirmed the illegality of the concessions<\/a> in July; in August the governor of Tshuapa province called for their cancellation. The Minister of Regional Planning recognized the “appropriateness” of the steps civil society had taken.<\/p>\n\n

Eve Bazaiba wasn\u2019t interested. On 13 September, having “no lesson to learn from an NGO<\/a>,” she dispatched a member of her cabinet, three section chiefs, the national REDD+ coordinator and two other ministry officials in support of the giant land grab. Or in ministerial language: to “Facilitate the negotiation and signing of social clause agreements, carry out socio-economic surveys and sign the FPIC of the firm TRADELINK.”<\/p>\n\n

Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is a notion Ms. Bazaiba clearly misunderstands: “prior” means before <\/em>the signing of juicy contracts, not after the “agreed sums” have been pocketed.<\/p>\n\n

Oddly, a provincial ministry official was assigned to the mission as a “representative of the company.” Mission expenses were, naturally, \u201ccovered by the concessionaire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

At the end of October, days after President Tshisekedi ordered the suspension of the concessions, the minister\u2019s team was still in the field.<\/p>\n\n

The revelation of Ms. Bazaiba’s involvement in the Tradelink affair comes just as the Congolese government seeks to push donors to accept a lifting of the 2002 moratorium on the allocation of new logging concessions. At COP26, the DRC will present itself as a \u201csolution country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Donors should know that when it comes to signing mission orders, Ms. Bazaiba applies double standards. When EU-financed auditors arrived in Kinshasa last spring to investigate the legality of forest titles, there was no rush: they were forced to wait until two months after the EU ambassador himself had to intervene to request she sign their mission order. When the mission is to aid Tradelink, her pen doesn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace Africa calls on the Head of State Felix Tshisekedi to order an urgent investigation to establish the responsibilities of all those, including Minister Eve Bazaiba, involved in the Tradelink scheme and to ensure that proper legal sanctions are applied.<\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace Africa reiterates its request to President Tshisekedi to see that his decision to suspend all illegal logging concessions is carried out.<\/p>\n\n

At a time when the whole world is mobilized for COP26, the DRC government must send a strong signal to both the Congolese and international community that Congo\u2019s forests are safe from new scams, by strengthening the decree on the moratorium on new forest concessions.<\/p>\n\n

END<\/p>\n\n

For more information and interviews: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Rapha\u00ebl Mavambu<\/strong>, Media and Communication, Greenpeace Africa, rmavambu@greenpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Ir\u00e8ne Wabiwa Betoko<\/strong>, International Project Manager for the Congo Basin Forest a.i., Greenpeace Africa, iwabiwa@greenpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCongo Basin Forest\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n Get Involved\n <\/a>\n \t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/section>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kinshasa, 29 October: Greenpeace has learned that the Congolese Vice-Prime Minister and Environment Minister currently presenting her country as the world’s carbon offsetting solution was promoting six illegal forest “conservation” concessions the size of the Bahamas only days before President Felix Tshisekedi ordered them suspended, in the run-up to COP26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":49432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[24,29,47],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-49431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protecttheenvironment","tag-forests","tag-biodiversity","tag-drc","p4-page-type-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49719,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49431\/revisions\/49719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49431"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=49431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}