Democratic Republic of Congo’s Minister of Finance Nicolas Kazadi has recently been called out by the public for carelessly and fraudulently paying out unbelievable amounts of public funds for street lighting and water drilling projects.
Kazadi paid out US$13 million public funds to a Turkish company, Solektra Sarlu, for the installation of 3500 street lights in Kinshasa with just 150 lamps mounted despite the government having fully paid for the project.
Meanwhile, government also released a mammoth US$400 million to drill 1000 boreholes across the country with Kazadi at the centre of this fraud.
Speaking at the press conference on Wednesday, Kazadi admits that the costs of the two projects were overpriced.
He also admitted that despite government having released funds, both the street lighting and borehole drilling projects had not been delivered since 2022.
The unearthing of this fraud carried out at the Ministry of Finance raises concerns amongst the Congolese population over the integrity of the Fèlix Tshisekedi regime which continues to be implicated in misappropriation of public funds.
A number of political actors are now calling for the delivery of the said projects and investigations to be instituted to bring accountability in the management of public finances.
