Katembo charges that Mr. Ngobobo had other duties as well.
Evidently Ngobobo was tipped by the ADG to report straight to the board members in Kinshasa and ignore Katembo, whose role became that of protocol only. The same situation exists in Kahuzi Biega, “for the same reasons,” Katembo says: the top brass in Kinshasa, who benefit from connections with Western elite organizations and greased the skids for the conservation and humanitarian programs that do not serve Congo, have key gatekeepers positioned to insure that their self-serving agendas are met.
Mysterious wire transfers and money laundering round out the picture, leaving little room for the survival of the mountain gorilla. According to Katembo, a man named Djomo Ngumbi connects the old fashioned way via phone with the ADG in order to trade pin numbers attached to wire transfers using “Mistercash” or Western Union through regular ICCN finance channels. (Mistercash is an online money transfer method, developed with the support of Belgian banks.)
Additional eyebrow-raising ICCN behaviors include:
[1] Issuing phony filming permits to international media and pocketing the cash;
[2] Issuing contracts directly to communication networks for cash or favors;
[3] Off-the books purchases of equipment and vehicles not disclosed to the public and/or without public tender.
Katembo charges that those who do the bidding of the big conservation and humanitarian NGOs from Europe, Japan and North America—are rewarded with exit visas and full tuition paid college educations for their children at top colleges in the donor countries. The end result is that expatriate agents of big conservation and the humanitarian misery industry open all the doors for the chosen few at the expense of the excluded many.
“Virunga National Park has a long tradition of being funded and supported,” said Katembo. “For example by the European Union, World Bank, USAID/CARPE, United Nations Development Program, UNESCO, all have been giving and helping in terms of conservation in Virungas. But if we look at the situation now, in 2007, we have to ask where have all the millions and millions gone? ICCN people in Kinshasa, where all these contracts are negotiated, have never been in the field, they don’t know anything about conservation. The members of the Western conservation clique go to Kinshasa and they charm the bosses. It is impossible to question a project after it has been approved in Kinshasa. You will find the Executive Director of ICCN driving a car that is beyond his budget and his salary. Pierre Kakule—the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund big chief from Tayna Conservation Area—has five cars in Goma and a mansion on Lake Kivu. You will find big gaps between what they earn and what you find in their houses. How do these people send their children to America? To Paris? To Yale or Harvard? It is the clique that intervenes now. They get a spokesman, a representative, a bonafide African voice, and in turn he will get gifts. Not a bicycle or a computer, but $50,000 to build a house on Lake Kivu, or a scholarship for their sons and daughters. Everything is greased. The entire process of the application, for example, to an elite college—it’s all insured, it’s all organized for them, and they are protected.”
Regarding this allegation, we have photo documentation of Kakule’s mansion, having been initially tipped by a US embassy official as to its existence. The official requested anonymity.
In other words, Dian Fossey was right when she charged in private correspondences that most money donated to her Digit Fund went directly into private coffers and shiny new vehicles for government officials.
Katembo charges that the same corrupt practices—what we call institutionalized white supremacy—are occurring with the hoardes of Western NGOs descending on war-torn Congo in search of contracts for “relief” and “post-conflict resolution.”
“There is money from Brussels for post conflict resolution,” says Katembo. “There is a lot of money for that. Soon we will have EU and USAID and UNESCO and UNDP and World Bank and Norwegian People’s Aid flags flying everywhere. Since January there have been five EU missions where consultants fly into Congo looking for “priority” projects. An expert comes in and says: ‘You need this, you need that, they target the money, they get the money, and when the money is gotten—then its time to eat—everyone comes together to divide up the money like hyenas at a kill. They bounce from donor to donor, you see them circling and circling, and whoever gets the money first you see all of them displaying the EU flag. Next time it will be USAID or the flag of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife. It’s the same culture with the humanitarian organizations. But they are not doing what Congo needs, and they don’t include Congolese people.”
We personally witnessed SUV’s from the Norwegian Refugee organization packing bar parking lots in Goma, but saw no evidence of them in the villages we visited, or along the roads through Virunga Park.
MAGICICAL MYSTERY TOUR
Carefully orchestrated conservation public relations pitches to the world revolve around seeming concern for the flora and fauna of the Virungas World Heritage Site, especially the mega fauna and flagship species: the embattled and endangered mountain gorilla. But perhaps this public concern masks motives and manipulations from a more sinister master.
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