{"id":50840,"date":"2022-04-01T13:36:04","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T13:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=50840"},"modified":"2022-04-01T15:04:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T15:04:29","slug":"the-logging-audit-that-spells-disaster-for-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc-and-its-donors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/blog\/50840\/the-logging-audit-that-spells-disaster-for-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc-and-its-donors\/","title":{"rendered":"The logging audit that spells disaster for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and its donors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kinshasa, 1 April 2022<\/strong>: After three months of pressure from Greenpeace Africa, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has finally backed down: after a leak in the media and the visit of an angry UK Minister, it realized it was no longer possible not to publish an explosive 2020 audit by the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) slamming the \u201cculpable laxism\u201d of the Environment Ministry and the \u201cchaos which well serves\u201d Ministry officials. <\/p>\n\n

Its publication before the end of 2021 was the very first milestone of the $500 million forest deal<\/a> signed by President F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi and donors at last November\u2019s COP26 in Glasgow. <\/p>\n\n

One now understands why the Congolese government nonchalantly missed this deadline and ignored the alert it received on 2 January, and it\u2019s not hard to imagine the donors\u2019 embarrassment. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWith all the gangrene this audit exposes, it\u2019s madness to lift the moratorium on new logging concessions \u2013 and yet this is what the DRC and its donors are preparing to do.  What we need is a plan to permanently protect forests, this is vital to thousands of local communities and indigenous people,\u201d says Ir\u00e8ne Wabiwa Betoko, head of the Greenpeace Africa forest campaign.<\/p>\n\n

The scathing audit, filed in May 2021, pulls no punches about Congolese \u201cforest governance,\u201d and it once again puts Vice-prime Minister and Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba in great difficulty. <\/p>\n\n

Last October \u2013 on the eve of COP26 \u2013 President Tshisekedi instructed<\/a> her to immediately suspend all \u201cdubious\u201d forest concessions.  In doing the bare minimum<\/a>, two months later, she seems to have forgotten about millions of hectares of more than \u201cdubious\u201d allocations identified by the IGF.<\/p>\n\n

By that time the donors of the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) had already taken out their checkbooks. The accord they signed at COP26 gives the green light to the lifting of a 2002 moratorium on new logging concessions.<\/p>\n\n

Ms. Bazaiba\u2019s negligence \u2013 she swears she hadn\u2019t seen the audit before February 2022 \u2013 is typical of the negligence the auditors describe as systemic. <\/p>\n\n

They found no less than 18 concessions awarded in violation of the 2002 moratorium. <\/p>\n\n

These illegal titles include the totality of those resold by US- and EU-sanctioned general and logger Gabriel Amisi to Chinese partners.  The IGF claims that $3.1 million of area tax for these titles has yet to be paid.  The inspectors recommend its collection \u201cby all legal means.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

They cast doubt on the \u201creceipts\u201d issued against area tax payments in the provinces. <\/p>\n\n

The favorite of the Agence fran\u00e7aise de d\u00e9veloppement (AFD) and DRC\u2019s only French logger, Compagnie foresti\u00e8re et de transformation (CFT), is claimed to owe back taxes as well.  Sporting a \u201clegality\u201d label issued by the certification service Preferred by Nature, CFT is also one of the only companies contacted which openly contested the IGF\u2019s right to audit it.  In 2021, the firm belonged to a Paisian expert in Old Masters painting, Eric Turquin, via his little-known Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise pour l\u2019environnement.  <\/p>\n\n

For the auditors, the absence of a bank deposit by certain loggers \u2013 including the leading Lebanese firm Industrie foresti\u00e8re du Congo (IFCO) \u2013 indicates a \u201csentimental and arbitrary\u201d application of the law.  Successive Ministers\u2019 use of direct negotiation for title award shows \u201call their resistance\u201d to respecting the law, \u201cprofiting their personal interests.\u201d  The gift to General Amisi was \u201cdeliberate favoritism.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Named one by one : Ministers Robert Bopolo, Bienvenu Liyota, Athys Kabongo, Franck Mwedi Malila, and the effervescent Amy Ambatobe et Claude Nyamugabo. <\/p>\n\n

But it\u2019s not only the Ministry \u2013 and, especially Ministers \u2013 of Environment that are denounced.  The IGF notes as well the \u201ctotal failure\u201d of the tax authority, the Direction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des recettes administratives, judiciaires, domaniales et de participations (DGRAD) \u2013 whose director didn\u2019t deign to respond to their request for feedback on their findings.  A total of four firms out of 45 listed paid area tax.  <\/p>\n\n

No doubt it\u2019s a bit complicated for the DGRAD to collect taxes from companies of which only a \u201cvery limited\u201d number could be localized by the IGF, the majority of addresses being \u201cerroneous or simply non-existent.\u201d  To blame: \u201cthe nonchalance of the forest administration in identifying and overseeing concessionaires.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s only a pity the period the IGF was mandated to audit terminated in mid-2020.  In the second half of that year, Claude Nyamugabo scored yet another hold-up, on a massive scale.  He handed out so-called \u201cconservation\u201d concessions half the size of Belgium to an obscure trading company called Tradelink<\/a>.  And several old logging concessions of the giant Portuguese-owned firm Nordsudtimber were able to convert, illegally, to \u201cconservation<\/a>\u201d status. Other firms benefited as well from Mr. Nyamugabo\u2019s indulgence.<\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace Africa again calls on President Tshisekedi to order the opening of a legal investigation into those officials responsible for plundering Congo\u2019s forest, and, where necessary, the lifting of their parliamentary immunity.  We demand that light be shed immediately on the present Minister\u2019s refusal to comply with his orders.  Why didn\u2019t she suspend a single logging concession when an audit delivered in May 2021 laid out the extent of the damage to be repaired? <\/p>\n\n

END<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Media Contact:<\/p>\n\n

Rapha\u00ebl Mavambu<\/strong>, Media and Communications Consultant for Greenpeace Africa, <\/p>\n\n

rmavambu@greenpeace.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kinshasa, 1 April 2022: After three months of pressure from Greenpeace Africa, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has finally backed down: it realized it was no longer possible not to publish an explosive 2020 audit by the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) slamming the \u201cculpable laxism\u201d of the Environment Ministry and the \u201cchaos which well serves\u201d Ministry officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":9062,"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":[24,47],"p4-page-type":[],"class_list":["post-50840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protecttheenvironment","tag-forests","tag-drc"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50840","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50840"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50852,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50840\/revisions\/50852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50840"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=50840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}