BREAKING: Africa's Biggest-Ever Leak, Dirty Millions Stashed in Washington DC Real Estate

NOTE from Congo Watch Editor: Thanks to The Sentry in Washington DC for sending me their report, copied here in full.

BREAKING: ‘CONGO HOLD-UP’

Africa’s Biggest-Ever Data Leak Reveals Dirty Millions Stashed in Washington DC Real Estate 

 

November 19, 2021 (Washington, DC) – Red flags for corruption, money laundering, and other financial crimes were ignored as millions of dollars linked to the former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) traveled through a maze of business transactions and were stashed in quiet residential neighborhoods surrounding the US capital Washington, DC, according to a new investigative report by The Sentry, “Embezzled Empire.” 

 

The Sentry’s revelations come today in the first wave of “Congo Hold-up,” a series of investigative reports by an international consortium of non-profit organizations and media outlets. The millions of leaked bank records obtained by the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) and the French news group Mediapart and shared with The Sentry and other consortium partners by PPLAAF and European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) represent the largest confidential data leak in African history.

Michelle Kendler-Kretsch, Investigator at The Sentry, said: “The Congo Hold-up leak is the clearest evidence to date of the powerful combination of tools the Kabila family had their fingertips to embezzle public funds, including a bank and a maze of companies all under their control. How the former president’s brother purchased millions of dollars’ worth of real estate in the US and South Africa, it appears in part using funds diverted from the Congolese government, is only one of many scandals now being revealed using this massive trove of leaked bank statements, emails, contracts, bills, and corporate records. This level of detail offers an unparalleled view of the previously-secret machinery used to plunder Congolese public funds.”

 

John Prendergast, Co-Founder of The Sentry, said: “Rarely is the world afforded such a clear and comprehensive view into the ways a state can be captured -- every theft of public money, backroom deal, and shell company, and every failure along the way to stop the chain of illicit transactions. With this magnitude of evidence in the Congo Hold-up leak, there should be no delay in bringing the corrupt perpetrators, their accomplices, and international enablers to justice.”

At a time of political turmoil, Francis Selemani, the brother of former DRC president Joseph Kabila, funneled steadily more money into real estate investments abroad, especially in the US. The Sentry’s investigation reveals how Selemani’s nine-year tenure in a senior management position at BGFIBank DRC gave the Kabila family and their allies access to a financial institution they could use to launder the proceeds of corruption. Oversight of BGFIBank DRC’s activities was badly deficient, as the bank’s own internal audit found, enabling the Kabila family to circulate funds clandestinely throughout their business network.

Justyna Gudzowska, Director of Illicit Finance Policy at The Sentry, said: "When the brother of a notoriously corrupt ruler is able to launder millions of dollars into real estate just a stone's throw from the US capital, it's high time to close the loopholes that allow this type of activity to flourish. The real estate industry has been far too happy to turn a blind eye to dirty money stolen from the world's poorest countries, and the exemption for real estate professionals in the US anti-money laundering framework should be revoked without delay." 

 

J.R. Mailey, Director of Investigations at The Sentry, said: “The Congo Hold-up leak is a paper trail of 3.5 million documents that leads to one central conclusion: banks are the arteries of a kleptocracy. They provide a place to park looted state assets, a vessel for paying and receiving bribes, a veil to disguise the origin and destination of illicit funds, and a conduit for stashing money in property abroad. The investigations published as part of this consortium provide a glimpse into how one of the world’s poorest countries has hemorrhaged untold wealth—but they also provide governments, law enforcement agencies, and financial institutions with the evidence needed to take meaningful action. The findings should prompt prosecutions, sanctions, asset seizures, hefty fines, and an overhaul of several countries’ anti-money laundering regimes.”

In the US, the full spectrum of anti-money laundering requirements only covers some of the professionals involved in a real estate transaction. Real estate professionals can provide valuable financial intelligence on possible illicit motives but are subject to fewer government reporting requirements than financial institutions.

 

Selected excerpts from The Sentry’s report:

- Although President Joseph Kabila’s final term as head of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was set to end in December 2016, he clung to power and delayed elections for another two years. While the eyes of many observers were fixed on the election stalling tactics in Kinshasa, Kabila’s brother Francis Selemani purchased numerous luxury homes in the United States and South Africa, it appears at least in part using funds diverted from the Congolese government. 

- At the time, Selemani was managing director of BGFIBank DRC, the Congolese subsidiary of Gabon-based BGFIBank Group.

- Selemani and the Kabila family used a network of companies and the bank they controlled to misappropriate public funds, transferring millions abroad and purchasing millions of dollars in foreign real estate.

- Because many of Selemani’s real estate acquisitions were all-cash purchases, he was able to avoid the standard due diligence performed in connection with bank financing—due diligence that might have raised questions about the source of his wealth. 

- Selemani and the Kabila family moved substantial sums through BGFIBank DRC with little to no resistance. Among the most problematic transactions, according to an internal audit at BGFIBank DRC, were multimillion-dollar transfers involving an obscure company called Sud Oil.

- Among the bank records in the Congo Hold-up leak are documents revealing that between 2015 and 2018, Sud Oil sent more than $12 million to accounts and companies owned or controlled by Selemani. 

- Investigations by The Sentry, Congo Research Group, and other members of the Congo Hold-up consortium show that Sud Oil received at least $85 million in funds from a range of Congolese government institutions, including the Central Bank of Congo, the DRC’s permanent mission to the United Nations in New York, the Congolese state-owned mining company Gécamines, and the country’s electoral commission. 

- Selemani purchased 17 properties for a total of $6.6 million in the affluent suburbs of Washington, DC, and Johannesburg, South Africa. 

- The Sentry identified a range of irregularities, misrepresentations, and inconsistencies in transactions connected to bank accounts held by Selemani and his companies that are red flags for money laundering and other financial crimes. Funds received from public institutions lacked justification, and the sources of funding for some transfers were misrepresented.

- Selemani and his companies received almost $3 million in US and South African bank accounts for which the wire transfers bore apparently inaccurate details.

- Selemani used corporate vehicles that obscured his identity as the owner of all but one of the 17 real estate purchases discovered by The Sentry. Selemani had originally purchased nine properties in his own name, but he then transferred ownership to a commercial company and to trusts he controlled, including by selling them to his own company, in a series of operations that is a red flag for money laundering through real estate. 

Key recommendations (complete recommendations in the report): 

- Open an investigation into these real estate purchases. Authorities in the United States and South Africa should investigate the source of funds used by Selemani and his relatives to buy properties in their respective countries. If appropriate, they should pursue legal mechanisms to forfeit and seize properties purchased with the proceeds of corruption or other illicit means.

- Conduct a thorough internal investigation. Any financial institution that has engaged in a correspondent banking relationship with BGFIBank DRC or processed transactions involving the bank should conduct a thorough internal investigation to ascertain whether it has participated in violations of law or contravened internal policies. The investigation should include a review of the financial institution’s internal controls around anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-corruption compliance. Appropriate remedial action should be implemented immediately.

- Ensure that the US and South African real estate sectors comply with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) customer due diligence standards. The US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) should require real estate agents and other professionals involved in real estate transactions, such as lawyers, to maintain AML programs, file suspicious activity reports, and comply with other record-keeping and reporting requirements, including the identification of beneficial ownership information and source of funds. South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) should vigorously enforce the 2017 additions to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) that put these requirements in place. FinCEN and the FIC should provide training and testing to ensure compliance with established standards. 

- Issue a public advisory on the money laundering risks in real estate. FinCEN should issue an updated public advisory to US financial institutions warning of the risks for money laundering through real estate, including the involvement of family members of politically exposed persons (PEPs) highlighted in this report. FinCEN should also expand and make permanent the geographic targeting order (GTO) program to cover all real estate purchases, regardless of location in the US.

Read the full report: https://thesentry.org/reports/embezzled-empire

Visit the Congo Hold-up coalition hub: https://congoholdup.com

For media inquiries or interview requests, please contact: 

Greg Hittelman, Director of Communications, +1 310 717 0606, gh@thesentry.org

About The Sentry

The Sentry is an investigative and policy team that follows the dirty money connected to African war criminals and transnational war profiteers and seeks to shut those benefiting from violence out of the international financial system. By disrupting the cost-benefit calculations of those who hijack governments for self-enrichment, we seek to counter the main drivers of conflict and create new leverage for peace, human rights, and good governance. The Sentry is composed of financial investigators, international human rights lawyers, and regional experts, as well as former law enforcement agents, intelligence officers, policymakers, investigative journalists, and banking professionals. Co-founded by George Clooney and John Prendergast, The Sentry is a strategic partner of the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

UN has accused Rwanda of wholesale war crimes, including possibly genocide, during years of conflict in the DR Congo

ACCORDING to an alleged UN report leaked by France's Le Monde newspaper, an unprecedented investigation investigation by the UN human rights commissioner says Hutu deaths 'cannot be put down to margins of war'.

Reportedly, the Rwandan government reacted angrily to the report today, dismissing it as "amateurish" and "outrageous" after attempting to pressure the UN not to publish it by threatening to pull out of international peacekeeping missions.

See report from guardian.co.uk
By Chris McGreal in Washington, Xan Rice in Nairobi, and Lizzy Davies in Paris - Thursday 26 August 2010 20.45 BST:
Leaked UN report accuses Rwanda of possible genocide in Congo

The United Nations has accused Rwanda of wholesale war crimes, including possibly genocide, during years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

An unprecedented 600-page investigation by the UN high commissioner for human rights catalogues years of murder, rape and looting in a conflict in which hundreds of thousands were slaughtered.

A draft version of the report, revealed by Le Monde and expected to be published next month, says the abuses, over a period of seven years and two invasions by Rwanda, amount to "crimes against humanity, war crimes, or even genocide" because the principal targets of the violence were Hutus, who were killed in their tens of thousands.

Among the accusations is that Rwandan forces and local allies rounded up hundreds of men, women and children at a time and butchered them with hoes and axes. On other occasions Hutu refugees were bayoneted, burned alive or killed with hammer blows in large numbers.

It is the first time the UN has published such forthright allegations against Rwanda, a close ally of Britain and the US.

The Rwandan government reacted angrily to the report today, dismissing it as "amateurish" and "outrageous" after reportedly attempting to pressure the UN not to publish it by threatening to pull out of international peacekeeping missions.

Rwanda's Tutsi leaders will be particularly discomforted by the accusation of genocide when they have long claimed the moral high ground for bringing to an end the 1994 genocide in their own country. But the report was welcomed by human rights groups, which called for the prosecution of those responsible for war crimes.

The report covers two periods: Rwanda's 1996 invasion of the country then called Zaire in pursuit of Hutu soldiers and others who fled there after carrying out the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis, and a second invasion two years later that broadened into a regional war involving eight countries.

Rwanda's attack on Zaire in 1996 was initially aimed at clearing the vast UN refugee camps around Goma and Bukavu, which were being used as cover by Hutu armed forces to continue the war against the new Tutsi-led government in Kigali.

Hundreds of thousands of the more than 1 million Hutus in eastern Zaire were forced back to Rwanda. Many more, including men who carried out the genocide but also large numbers of women and children, fled deeper into Zaire. They were pursued and attacked by the Rwandan army and a Zairean rebel group sponsored by Kigali, the AFDL.

The UN report describes "the systematic, methodical and premeditated nature of the attacks on the Hutus [which] took place in all areas where the refugees had been tracked down".

"The pursuit lasted months and, occasionally, humanitarian aid intended for them was deliberately blocked, notably in the eastern province, thus depriving them of things essential to their survival," the report said.

"The extent of the crimes and the large number of victims, probably in the several tens of thousands, are demonstrated by the numerous incidents detailed in the report. The extensive use of non-firearms, particularly hammers, and the systematic massacres of survivors after camps were taken prove that the number of deaths cannot be put down to the margins of war. Among the victims were mostly children, women, old and ill people."

The report goes on to say that "the systematic and widespread attacks have a number of damning elements which, if proved before a competent court, could be described as crimes of genocide".

The UN also adds that while Kigali has permitted Hutus to return to Rwanda in large numbers, that did not "rule out the intention of destroying part of an ethnic group as such and thus committing a crime of genocide".

The Zairean army collapsed in the face of the invasion and Rwanda seized the opportunity to march across the country and overthrow the longstanding dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Laurent Kabila was installed as president. He promptly changed the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Rwanda invaded again in 1998 after accusing the new regime of continuing to support Hutu rebels. The following five years of war drew in armies from eight nations as well as 21 rebel groups in a conflict that quickly descended in to mass plunder of the DRC's minerals as well as a new wave of war crimes.

The UN report accuses Angolan forces of using the cover of the war to attack refugees from Angola's conflict-plagued Cabinda province who had fled to the DRC. Angola is accused of "executing all those they suspected of colluding with their enemies". Angolan soldiers also raped and looted, the UN investigation said.

International human rights groups welcomed the UN report and said it should be used to bring the accused to trial. "This is a very important report," said Human Rights Watch. "We hope that it can form the basis for ending the impunity that has protected the people responsible for some of these crimes."

The UN's damning conclusions will prove hugely embarrassing to Rwanda, which is attempting to project itself as a rapidly modernising state that has put its brutal recent history behind it.

President Paul Kagame's office attempted to dismiss the report. "It's an amateurish NGO job, and it's outrageous," said a spokeswoman, Yolande Makolo. "Nobody reasonable believes that it's helpful to anybody. The countries mentioned in the draft report have rejected it and will continue to reject it."

Makolo did not comment on reports that Kagame last month warned the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, that Rwanda would pull its troops out of peacekeeping missions in Darfur and elsewhere if the report was made public. Le Monde said that threat was reiterated in a letter to Ban by Rwanda's foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, said the leaked draft was not the final version and the report to be published next month had undergone revisions.

"It's only a draft from about two months ago and the proper final version will come up very soon," he said.

But if there are substantial differences, the UN is likely to stand accused of bowing to pressure from Rwanda.

Atrocities detailed in the UNHCR document seen by Le Monde

Kinigi, 7 December 1996 "Elements from the AFDL/APR killed nearly 310 civilians, many of them women and children. The troops had accused the local population, mostly Hutu, of sheltering Interahamwe [Hutu paramilitaries, who] had already left the village. At first the troops sought to reassure the civilians [whom they gathered together] in several buildings, including the adventist church and the primary school. In the afternoon, troops entered these buildings and killed the villagers with hoes or axes to the head."

Luberizi, 29 October 1996 "Elements from the AFDL/APR/FAB [Burundi's armed forces] killed around 200 male refugees. The victims were part of a group of refugees told by the troops to regroup so that they could be repatriated to Rwanda. The troops separated the men from the rest of the group and killed them with bayonets or bullets. The bodies were then buried in mass graves [near to] the church."

Bwegera, 3 November 1996 "They burned alive 72 Rwandan refugees in Cotonco (cotton company) headquarters, one kilometre from the village."

Mutiko, December 1996 "Special units from the AFDL/APR started to hunt down refugees, killing several hundred. Once they had been intercepted at barriers put up by the troops, the victims were given food and told to get into UN lorries waiting at the exit of the village. The victims were then taken out on to the road, then killed with blows to the head with canes, hammers and axes. The troops encouraged the local population to take part in the killings."

Top UN man in DR Congo mission as unrest escalates

John Holmes will meet president Joseph Kabila during five-day mission.

Top UN man in DR Congo mission as unrest escalates
From BBC News, Kinshasa
By Thomas Fessy at 22:59 GMT, Thursday, 29 April 2010 23:59 UK:

The UN's top humanitarian official has flown into the troubled Democratic Republic of Congo as armed groups continue to spread insecurity.

John Holmes will travel to three provinces where humanitarian workers face increasingly difficult conditions.

He will also visit a region where tens of thousands of people have reportedly been forced to flee their homes.

Human rights abuses such as rapes and lootings are reported regularly in the country.

Fighting and banditry

Mr Holmes will visit the Kivu region, where a military campaign backed by the UN against Rwandan Hutu rebels has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Aid workers say better protection for civilians was promised at the end of similar joint military operations last year.

But, in reality, human rights abuses such as rapes and lootings are reported regularly.

And, they say, displacements of populations are constant. The situation is becoming increasingly difficult for humanitarian workers whose operations have been restricted by fighting and banditry.

As a result, thousands of people in need are left with no assistance.

Mr Holmes is also travelling to the north-eastern part of the country, where attacks by Ugandan rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army on villages are still frequent.

His Congo tour will eventually take him to the western province of Equateur, where a recent insurgency by Enyele fighters has pushed thousands of people into the bush.

The Congolese authorities have asked the UN mission to prepare for a withdrawal; Mr Holmes will be discussing civilian protection issues with President Joseph Kabila on Monday.

RARE INTERVIEW with Joseph Kabila - Rebuilding the lives of DR Congo's child soldiers

For Congo’s child soldiers, brutalised and forced to kill, rehabilitation is a long journey. Yet in war-ravaged eastern Congo one transitional centre is slowly helping them rebuild their lives. Mary Riddell sees it at work, and talks to Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila.



Rebuilding the lives of Congo's child soldiers
By Mary Riddell

Telegraph.co.uk
Published: Thursday, 16 July 2009

Gilbert did not mean to kill anyone. He did not even intend to go to war. He was 10 when a relative enlisted him in a rebel army in eastern Congo and 12 when he led a raid in which his cousin died. 'I was ordered to kill the son of the leader in my village. I was put in charge of the group, and ordered to fire as people fled. The leader was my uncle; his boy was six years old.’

If Gilbert wished, he could make excuses for what he did. He could say, truthfully, that he would have been executed if he had failed to obey orders. In the frenzy of battle, he cannot even be sure whose bullet dealt the mortal wound. But, as the appointed leader, he shoulders all blame for an atrocity whose legacy he will never escape.

Gilbert is 16 now, and we meet in the transitional centre for former child soldiers where he has lived since UN peacekeepers rescued him two years ago. He is a solemn boy with a laddered yellow T-shirt and a face turned old by sorrow.

He has not told his story before, and he volunteers the information slowly. At first, he was enrolled by his relative in the CNDP (National Congress of the Defence of the People), the militia headed by Laurent Nkunda, now being held in a Rwandan jail.

Gilbert was tortured before fleeing into the arms of Pareco, a rival rebel group and another finishing school for juvenile killers.

By some fluke, Gilbert did not die in the crossfire between the two militias. One bullet hole is gouged in his neck close to the carotid artery; a second shot hit his groin. 'I was near a hospital, and a doctor bound up the wounds. But I wasn’t allowed to stay. After a few hours I was back in the forest. There were constant battles and, by the end, I was fighting every day. Then somone brought me here.

'I cannot go back to school. I have already reached adult age. I would love to see my family but I cannot go home to my village because of what I have done. My brother came to see me once, and I asked if I could return. He said that if I did, my old friends would kill me.’ I ask if he misses anything about being a soldier, and he says, 'I hate violence. But I think sometimes of my mitraillette [sub-machine gun]. I took it everywhere with me.’

Far from being the boast of a juvenile Rambo, this seems more like the nostalgia a normal adolescent might feel for an old toy. Gilbert has no other relics of childhood to cling to and no good future to embrace. He is a child of modern Congo: his story typical of a thousand others.

Congo should be a country of plenty. It possesses vast mineral wealth and its fertile land could feed the whole of Africa, but conflict and recession have left a nation the size of western Europe close to bankruptcy. About 5.4 million people have died in the war that has ravaged Congo for the majority of Gilbert’s lifetime. About 54 per cent of children here live in poverty; one third will not finish primary school.

These are the lucky ones. More than a fifth of children die in infancy, and 45,000 under-fives perish each year from avoidable causes. At the root of disease and exploitation is the internecine conflict whose fighters – easy to snatch and simple to train – are often under 10 years old. About 31,000 children have been demobilised from Congo’s battlefields since 1999, but at least 8,000 are still being used as combatants, porters and sex slaves.

The transitional centre where Gilbert lives stands in Goma, the major town of the eastern Kivu provinces. A row of shabby single-storey buildings is divided into classrooms and dormitories, where the 311 boys sleep, six to a room, in wooden bunk beds. The five girls who stay here have a room annexed to the director’s office to give them some vestige of privacy and extra protection.

A large playground running the length of the compound is bounded by high walls and security gates designed to keep intruders out. Although the layout suggests a halfway house between a boarding school and a young offender institution, the noise of boys at play reflects the joy of freedom.

This centre, set up in 2005 by a Congolese NGO called Cajed (Concert d’Actions pour Jeunes et Enfants Défavorisés) and financially backed by Unicef, is one of several similar institutions scattered across the country. Unicef helped reintegrate 4,657 child soldiers into their communities last year at a cost of $700 per child, but lack of funding means that a backlog of 3,000 youngsters are denied the specialist help on offer here.

Unicef’s regional head, Julien Harneis, urges all armed groups to give up their child soldiers. 'The conflict is causing untold humanitarian suffering and gross violations of children’s rights,’ he says.

Few understand such attrition better than Fidele Rutabagisha, the director of the Goma centre. He and his 17 staff are used to dealing with adolescents whose bitter experiences mean that their moods seesaw between glee and anger. From the moment they are referred to his care, Rutabagisha embarks on a regime of 'peaceful rehabilitation’.

'These children are used to the field of battle,’ he says. 'They have to live together in peace. First we give them clothes, blankets and sabots [plastic clogs]. Then we divide them into “family” units. They eat together and take care of their surroundings. They learn self-respect and la vie morale.’

Discipline is key to the curriculum. The children are woken at 6am and given an hour in which to wash, tidy their rooms and speak to their 'families’. Breakfast, which they prepare themselves, is from 7am to 8am. The rest of the day is divided into hour-long slots devoted to science, maths, music, sport and languages. 'Morality’ lessons focus on community life, courtesy and self-respect.

Outside counsellors are brought in to treat children with emotional and mental health problems, and pupils are gradually allowed out to mingle with townspeople. Some transfer to a halfway house to be taught alongside 'normal’ children: Oxfam, in conjunction with Cajed, offers counselling and training in carpentry, electronics, cooking and sewing to help teenagers back into the community.

Last year the joint programme arranged 558 homecomings. For the less fortunate, the only prospect is life with a host family, or a lone existence for those nearing adulthood. For the third of children who will never go home, the joy of others is sometimes hard to bear. Rutabagisha shows me a room damaged in a recent fracas. 'Some of the boys broke windows and smashed the roof. They were angry that no families could be found for them.’

Rutabagisha’s pupils, who range from eight to 16, have experiences to chill an adult soul. Some were abducted from loving families. Others were persuaded by influential adults that life as a soldier would be well-paid and easy. Guelord, 15, was invited to a relative’s home to meet his older cousin’s new bride. 'But there was no wife. My cousin said, “Get into this uniform. Here’s a gun.” I was trapped. I thought I could stay for a few days and then escape, but they paraded me as a soldier, and I could not go back after that. I did three years.

'The children serving with Pareco were on guard all night; many were assassinated by the CNDP, our enemy. If you made one mistake, you would be killed by your superiors. I did not kill anyone, but I wounded an older boy in an attack on the CNDP. I watched my bullet go into his leg, and I was frightened I would die, like many of my friends.’

Like many of the children here, Guelord was rescued by the UN. As yet no family has been found for him, but he hopes he will one day become a street trader or, if he is lucky, a shopkeeper.

Unlike the boys in the centre, Niclette never wanted to be here. She is 17, and five months pregnant. She went to war with her husband, who is in his thirties; not to fight, but because he told her they should be together. When a child protection team brought her here, she was distraught.

'No one bothered me when I was in the army. I was by my husband’s side, and I was not prepared for this. I didn’t know we would have to separate. I want and hope to see my husband again.’

Niclette cannot go home to her parents in Masisi, 30 miles away, because she is now the property of her husband. 'He gave my father and mother three goats as a dowry when we married, which means they cannot take me back.’ So she waits here, unsure what will happen to her or her child. 'I hope my baby will have the life of my parents, who grow beans and manioc,’ she says.

The civil war that defines modern Congo traces back to the country’s independence in 1960. A military coup by Joseph Mobutu in 1965 ushered in an age of corruption fuelled by the country’s mineral wealth. In 1997 neighbouring Rwanda invaded to flush out Hutu rebels, allowing anti-Mobutu insurgents to oust the president and install Laurent Kabila in his place.

In the ensuing fracas, Rwanda and Uganda tried to unseat Kabila, who was shot dead by one of his bodyguards in 2001, leaving his son to assume the presidency. A close-run election in 2006 established Joseph Kabila as Congo’s first democratically appointed leader.

Now, he tells me in a rare interview, his country is moving away from war. But the calm he proclaims is highly provisional. Earlier this year Kabila joined forces with his enemy, the Rwandan president Paul Kagame, to attack the rebel FDLR, made up of Hutu extremists who fled to Congo after orchestrating the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

In return, Laurent Nkunda – the CNDP leader who plotted to overthrow Kabila – was arrested and placed in custody by Rwanda, which had regarded him as an ally until international backers threatened to withdraw aid as a protest against the regime’s perceived approval of Nkunda’s killing sprees. This win-win deal, heralded as a great move towards peace by both leaders, has not so far benefited Congo’s beleaguered children. A few weeks after the end of hostilities, Oxfam reported that the FDLR were regrouping and that 250,000 more people had been displaced. As violence flared again, the charity repeated the call for the world to act and, in particular, to muster the long-promised 3,000 extra troops to boost Monuc, the UN’s biggest but enfeebled peacekeeping force.

Kabila refuses to acknowledge the frailty of a 'peace’ that has been dearly bought. The CNDP has been incorporated into the national army, and Nkunda’s brutish successor, Bosco Ntaganda, appointed a general in the government army, despite being wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including conscripting child soldiers. 'We made a painful decision,’ Kabila tells me. 'In Congo, peace must come before justice.’

Though there is little of either, Kabila has another ace up his sleeve. A $9 billion deal will give China a slice of Congo’s vast reserves of copper, cobalt and other minerals, in return for building 2,400 miles of road, 2,000 miles of railway, 32 health centres and two universities.

While this may not stop the fighting, Kabila calculates that the planned improvements to his country will enhance his personal prestige. The new infrastructure, to be concentrated in the eastern heartland where Kabila needs the votes, could be a boon to Congo’s children. Instead, it seems possible that the deal will mean more exploitation. Youngsters not signed up as soldiers are often requisitioned as miners, labouring for a pittance to dig the minerals, such as cassiterite or tin ore that make warlords rich and fund Congo’s endless conflict. A spokesman for the charity Global Witness says, 'You see kids of seven working long days in small tunnels.’

China’s planned stake in the extractive industries has alarmed aid workers, who fear its dubious human rights record will make things worse. 'That would certainly be a concern,’ says Daniel Large, the research director of the Africa Asia Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. 'Where you have weak regulation, Chinese companies are not unique in trying to get away with anything. But equally, you shouldn’t have only negative expectations. If anything, you can argue this is welcome. Congo needs investment, and it’s the first time a Chinese resource deal has had a social component, such as building schools.’

For decades the West has either violated Congo, in the case of the Belgian colonialists who inspired Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or averted its gaze from a land whose children are sacrificed to brutality and greed. British politicians, like their European counterparts, have promised to help, but their good intentions have faded into silence.

In the playground of the rehabilitation centre, the music group is singing. 'Les enfants réclament la paix dans leur pays. Toujours la paix (the children reclaim peace in their country. Always peace).’ They have learnt to believe in a better tomorrow. But who, in Congo and the wider world, will justify their faith?

Names of the child soldiers have been changed