Congo’s $6 Billion Heist: Lawmakers Feast, Teachers Starve

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 29 Sep 2025

Raïs Neza Boneza – TRANSCEND Media Service

24 Sep 2025 – In Kinshasa, thieves don’t hide in shadows—they wear suits, sit in Parliament, and call themselves “leaders.”What follows is not rumor. It is a record of organized plunder that has crippled one of Africa’s richest nations.

Since Mister Félix Tshisekedi took power in 2019, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been looted with a brazenness that shocks even by Congo’s long history of kleptocracy. If you want power here, the qualification isn’t vision, it’s theft. If you want reward, you don’t serve—you steal.

A brief timeline of Betrayal

• 2019: $15 million siphoned in kickbacks, implicating Vital Kamerhe, then Tshisekedi’s chief of staff. Today, he is rewarded—now presiding over the National Assembly.
• The “100 Days Program”: $600 million stolen.
• Prefab Housing Scam: $57 million gone.
• Francophonie Summit: $324 million pocketed.
• Chili-Gelou Project: $102 million looted.
• COVID-19 Relief: $300 million siphoned while Congolese choked on poverty and disease.
• RAM Project (cellphone tax): $600 million bled from citizens.
• National ID Scheme: $697 million evaporated—leaving Congo the only nation on Earth where citizens still lack official ID cards.
• Arms Procurement: $722 million gone, while eastern Congo continues to burn.
• Mercenaries, “Civil House,” Satellite Project: Hundreds of millions more scattered like ashes.

In total, over $6 billion has vanished since 2019.

Ghost Projects, Ghost Justice

Roads promised, hospitals announced, schools inaugurated on paper only—nothing on the ground but dust. Even Tshisekedi’s hometown of Mbujimayi saw $14 million vanish without a single trace of development.

The scheme is simple: announce a project, siphon the money, abandon the site. A nation robbed in broad daylight.

And the judiciary? Silent. The Minister of Justice, Constant Mutamba, spends more energy attacking journalists and activists than investigating thieves. Parliament, the Inspectorate, the Court of Accounts—paralyzed and complicit.

Fat Salaries for Thieves, Hunger for Workers

The theft is not only in projects, but in paychecks.

• A parliamentarian in Kinshasa pockets tens of thousands of dollars a month—often with bonuses and perks—while a teacher survives on wages so low they can’t cover food for a week.
• The President surrounds himself with a swarm of advisers, each paid more than the nation’s doctors, while hospitals crumble for lack of supplies.
• Police officers patrol without salaries for months. Soldiers die at the front lines underfed, their families abandoned.

This obscene imbalance makes the robbery starker: those who steal are rewarded; those who serve are starved.

The Presidential Family Empire

The scandal doesn’t stop with ghost projects. The President’s own family has quietly secured mining concessions across Congo’s resource-rich provinces. In just a few short years of Tshisekedi’s presidency, they have gone from political outsiders to billionaires.

While children study under trees, the presidential clan profits from cobalt and copper deals signed in secrecy. While soldiers die unpaid, the first family counts dollars from concessions carved out of the nation’s soil.

It is not simply corruption. It is dynastic plunder—the transformation of public power into private fortune, with Congo’s minerals as collateral.

An Institutionalized Theft

Former Finance Minister Nicolas Kazadi himself exposed the rot: project funds were shared among presidential insiders before the first brick was ever laid. He admitted it openly—yet walks free. Why? Because he too stole for the palace. Tshisekedi even defended him, calling him “a father of family,” as if family status grants immunity.

This is not corruption. This is systematic state capture—a theft so normalized it masquerades as governance.

The Human Cost

While the elite dine, the people choke:

• Children study under trees.
• Mothers give birth in clinics without electricity or clean water.
• Police beg in the streets.
• Soldiers fight wars without food or ammunition.
• Teachers, the backbone of any future, earn starvation wages.

Congo is not poor. It is being robbed.

A Call to Break the Silence

This is betrayal at the scale of nations. The figures are not rumors. They are facts. And yet silence rules Kinshasa.

The Congolese people—and the world—must refuse this silence. Journalists, activists, lawyers, students, and the diaspora: this is your fight.

The truth cannot be hidden under presidential carpets. Not while $6 billion has been shoveled into private pockets. Not while thieves wear medals and teachers go hungry. Not while the presidential family grows fat on mining concessions as the nation sinks deeper into poverty.

This is the Congo today: a country rich enough to build the continent, crippled into begging for survival.

But truth endures. And until justice is done, until dignity is restored, until Congo stands upright—we will not stop speaking.

Congo is not poor.
Congo is being robbed.
And the thieves are in power.

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Raïs Neza Boneza is the author of fiction as well as non-fiction, poetry books and articles. He was born in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaïre). He is also an activist and peace practitioner. Raïs is convener of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment for Central and African Great Lakes and uses his work to promote artistic expressions as a means to deal with conflicts and maintaining mental wellbeing, spiritual growth and healing. He has travelled extensively in Africa and around the world as a lecturer, educator and consultant for various NGOs and institutions. His work is premised on art, healing, solidarity, peace, conflict transformation and human dignity issues. Raïs work also as freelance journalist based in Trondheim, Norway. You can reach him at rais.boneza@gmail.com. http://www.raisnezaboneza.no

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