The "proactive diplomacy" of juicy bribes, lifted with ease from the public purse

Since taking office in January 2019, the presidency of the DRC's Félix Tshisekedi has, regrettably, been marked by repeated scandals, corruption and widespread embezzlement.

From his first days in power, Félix Tshisekedi opted for tribalism as a method of government: placing his kinsmen from the Kasaï region in key positions, and engineering an exodus of Kasaï's population towards Kinshasa and the mineral-rich Katanga region.

For those who may not know, until he took office in January 2019, President Félix Tshisekedi relied on Belgian state welfare and, in Kinshasa, lived in the family home in Limete.

He has built a veritable cartel with his relatives, one devoted in particular to plundering Katanga's mineral resources. In eight years, the Tshisekedis and the family of his wife, Denise Nyakeru, have amassed several thousand dollars [sic – "millions"?], which they have stashed in Europe, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates: cash hidden in safes, gold bars, diamonds and property. Worse still, it is Tshisekedi himself who, through cunning, defamation and slander, wrongly accuses Rwanda of supposedly looting the DRC's resources, and of being the cause of his own incompetence.

On 14 October 2026, Belgium's federal prosecutor's office carried out searches at the homes of relatives and family members of Félix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The investigation concerns suspected corruption, money laundering, embezzlement and mining irregularities, following a complaint lodged in July 2025 by civil society groups in Greater Katanga after a report on the plundering of mines.

On 17 October 2026, the American newspaper The New York Times reported that the Tshisekedi clan had allegedly transferred more than $17m to two advisers of President Donald Trump in order to sway the White House in its favour. Meanwhile, 70% of Congolese live below the poverty line, in extreme poverty.

According to the New York Times, the White House inquiry into the dispute between Richard Grenell and Alina Habba Mildon, a former personal lawyer to Donald Trump, concerns a $17.6m wire transfer made in May 2025 from a bank account linked to the Congolese government to TX-AT, a security and defence company based in Texas.

Ms Habba Mildon accuses Mr Grenell, then special envoy to Venezuela and president of the Kennedy Center, of diverting part of the money, which was meant to go to the arts institution. He denies the claim. She had first said the funds came from her husband, the Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon, who presents himself as an adviser to Tshisekedi, carries a Congolese diplomatic passport, and whose company, Milvest, has won several public contracts in the DRC, including the Kinshasa financial centre.

Despite surging mineral prices and huge export revenues, ordinary Congolese see no benefit. Hunger, crumbling infrastructure, and run-down schools and hospitals with no equipment are commonplace in every province.

The Tshisekedi administration once boasted of a "proactive diplomacy". Today it looks like smoke and mirrors: a diversion built on corruption and the manipulation of options.

The world's gaze is fixed on the east. Yet in the 90% of the country that Kinshasa still controls, things are worse, starting with the capital: squalor, insecurity, joblessness, constant power cuts, no clean drinking water, and cholera, malaria and chronic dysentery.