Emmanuel De Merode is a Belgian born primatologist married to Louise Leakey, Richard Leakey’s daughter, who has years of association with Congo/Zaire. Richard Leakey is the founder of Wildlife Direct, a non-profit organization registered in Washington DC that operates under the mantle of the Africa Conservation Fund: ACF is affiliated with former U.S. State Department and National Security Agency officials. Wildlife Direct has been at the epicenter of the controversial gorilla killings in Virunga Park, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Within a week of Katembo’s comments the Executive Director of ICCN, Wilingula, was apologizing to and reassuring the international conservation sector; Vital Katembo was suspended, ostracized widely, and threatened.
It is the classic smear campaign to discredit the whistleblower and shoot the messenger.
“By suspending me and not allowing me to work,” Katembo wrote on August 30, 2007, the Executive Director of ICCN “is trying his best to stop me from telling the truth about the weaknesses and failure of management of protected areas in DRC during his tenure and make sure that all goes into silence.”
With nothing more to lose and an eloquent plea to take care of his beloved daughter if anything should happen to him, Katembo, in a courageous move, named those principally responsible for misappropriating funds, skimming, bribery and corruption.
These allegations, leveled by Katembo, need scrutiny. We have sent these charges and others directly to the United States Department of Justice, which has oversight responsibilities on USAID and other grants, including the non-profit status of conservation organizations operating on African soil, but registered as non-profits in the US. It is obvious that the Congolese officials named will not investigate themselves, and there is no other system in place to investigate corruption in DRC, or the disposition of US tax dollars.
At the top of the list of alleged corrupt Congolese officials Katembo names are:
[1] Pasteur Cosma Wilingula: ICCN Executive Director;
[2] Djomo Ngumbi: ICCN finance assistant (Wilingula’s brother-in-law);
[3] Georges Mwamba: Cabinet Director and Personal Assistant in Charge of International Cooperation;
[4] Benoit Kisuki: Technical Director and Interim Finance Director or ADT;
[5] Numerous Chief Technical advisors for the EU, GEF-World Bank and UNDP.
“Today the Executive Director of ICCN Cosmu Wilungula can use his power and position to say anything about me,” says Katembo, “but if he was not satisfied of my services and contributions in the Virungas he could have sent me out before—not after—I revealed that he is the master of a corrupt system.”
In Congo there is no national whistleblower protection organization or even the most basic of court systems to assist an honest man like Vital Katembo (journalists routinely disappear or are murdered). Both of the authors of this story have been either detained or briefly imprisoned due to the machinations of corrupt interests. Corruption is widespread, imported and institutionalized by Western power brokers. Katembo’s story will never make 60 Minutes, as did the story of Jeffrey Wigand who exposed the scandal of BIG TOBACCO in the United States or FBI agent Coleen Rowley who exposed the inadequacies of the FBI in the aftermath of 9/11.
Katembo charges that ICCN officials approve budgets and sanction monitoring missions in the field. He lists all the big World Heritage sites in Congo as targets of corruption: Virunga, Salonga, Kahuzi-Biega, and Garamba National Parks and the Okapi Faunal Reserve in Congo’s Ituri region. According to Katembo ICCN bosses “do business” with high-level officials and military in hotels and restaurants in Goma, Kisangani and Bukavu. These associated costs could pay for a group of rangers deployed at strategic field outposts within the park, Katembo says. The “mission reports” by these individuals who never leave the hotels always read the same—“the evaluation mission went on well but problems remain.”
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