The United States (US) has reportedly sanctioned three top election officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo on corruption charges tied to the long-delayed presidential election.
All the three senior leaders of the DRC’s National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) are accused of misappropriating funds that were supposed to be used to conduct a Presidential election in December 2016. The voting was forced to be postponed until December 2018.
The three accused also allegedly inflated the contract cost for supplying voting machines by more than $100 million and used the money for personal gain, paying bribes, and support campaign for outgoing President Joseph Kabila’s preferential candidate.
Kabila was supposed to have stepped down in 2016, but postponement of the election by the CENI officials, kept him in office for another two years.
“We stand with the Congolese people who went to the polls on December 30 but remain concerned about a flawed electoral process which, following the presidential election, CENI continued to obstruct the democratic process and failed to ensure the vote reflected the will of the Congolese people,” said Sigal Mandelker, U.S. Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, in a statement released on Thursday, reported VOA News.
Although the statement casts doubt on whether the vote was fair, it did not say whether it believes the December 2018 election was rigged.
The announcement comes nearly a month after the US government imposed travel and visa curbs against six DRC officials, including the three who have been sanctioned on Thursday. Notably, none of the three men have commented on the charges.
After much delay, DRC went to polls on Dec. 30. Opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi was declared the election winner by the country’s constitutional court, despite widespread concerns by the international community over the outcome of the contentious election. The 2018 election was DRC’s first peaceful transition of power in nearly 60 years.
