08 March 2021 :

Two whistleblowers Gradi Koko Lobanga and Navy Malela were sentenced to death in absentia in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in September 2020, the PPLAAF said on 4 March 2021.
A sentence that was awarded for denouncing Afriland First Bank which in turn filed a complaint against its two former employees — accusing them of “theft of documents, violation of banking secrecy, forgery and use of forgeries, slanderous denunciation, all in an organised gang.”
The announcement of the death sentence has prompted outrage from anti-corruption organisations.
In protection of the two sentenced men who are now in exile in Europe with their families, the Platform for the Protection of Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) released a statement denouncing the sentence ruled by the perceived mock trial in their absence.
14 organisations united in the network "Congo is not for sale" (CNPAV) also issued a public statement in the men’s defence, "It is outrageous that two individuals, working courageously for the common interest, have been sentenced to death, without even having had the opportunity to be heard or defended."
In July 2020, the PPLAAF and the anti-corruption NGO Global Witness revealed — at the alert of Lobanga and Malela, that an Israeli billionaire with mining assets in the DRC, Dan Gertler, appeared "to have used a money-laundering network, stretching from the DRC to Europe and Israel, to evade US sanctions against him."
The two NGOs claimed that Gertler, who is close to former President Kabila, had "opened bank accounts in the Congolese branches of Cameroon-based Afriland First Bank."
Immediately after this revelation, the bank in question filed a complaint with the Paris public prosecutor's office (PPLAAF headquarters) against its two former employees. There has been a temporary interdiction on the application of capital punishment in the DRC since 2003.

04 January 2021 :

DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi’s office said that he has pardoned two men convicted over the assassination of former ruler Laurent-Desire Kabila, the father of his political rival Joseph Kabila, AFP reported on 2 January 2021.
The announcement comes during a political crisis that has put Tshisekedi at loggerheads with Joseph Kabila, his immediate predecessor as president.
Laurent-Desire Kabila was shot dead in his office by one of his bodyguards on 16 January 2001. The bodyguard was then shot dead.
But two senior officials, the slain president’s former aide de camp Colonel Eddy Kapend and former intelligence chief Georges Leta, were among those convicted of the conspiracy to kill the president. Both men have denied any part in the plot.
Kapend and some of his co-accused “benefit from the presidential pardon of 31 December 2020, which is a measure of a general scope and of an impersonal character”, Giscard Kusema, of the presidential press team, told AFP.
It was part of a process that had started on 30 June last year when the president commuted death sentences to life jail terms, he added.
The latest presidential decree said that those people who had served 20 years in prison by 31 December should be freed, said Kusema.
“Eddy Kapend and some members of his group are therefore concerned,” he added.
The news comes just a few weeks after Tshisekedi ended his increasingly fractious coalition with Kabila on 6 December. But Kabila’s supporters still hold a majority in parliament.
The break between the two rival political factions has been followed by brawls in parliament that have sparked alarm abroad and fears of new unrest in a country with a long history of conflict.

15 May 2021 :

Thirty people were sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 15 May 2021 after a one-day trial for their role in anti-police violence marking the end of Ramadan in the capital.
A policeman was killed in Kinshasa on 13 May as rival Muslim groups fought over the right to mark the end of Ramadan at a major sports stadium.
Lawyer Chief Tshipamba said 30 people were sentenced to death in a trial that started on 14 May, a day after the violence took place. A recording of the proceedings confirmed the verdict.
The DRC has not carried out death penalties since a moratorium was introduced in 2003. Since then, death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment.
The regional government said in addition to the police officer killed several people were hurt and one police vehicle was burned in the fighting outside the Martyrs’ Stadium.
Kinshasa police chief Sylvano Kasongo said about 40 people were wounded and 35 arrested.
Two rival factions have for years disputed the leadership of the DRC’s Comico Muslim federation. The two sides remain at odds and occasionally come to blows.
About 10 percent of the DRC’s population is Muslim, mostly concentrated in the country’s east.
But Kinshasa on the Congo River in the west of the vast central African country also traditionally sees mass celebrations for the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in public squares and on major roads.

10 March 2021 :

Sixteen people, including a doctor, have been sentenced to death in absentia for the murder of a Cameroonian Ebola expert, lawyers said on 9 March 2021.
Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, an epidemiologist employed by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), was gunned down in April 2019 at a work meeting at a hospital in Butembo, in North Kivu province.
He was one of many foreign medical workers who had been brought in to help fight an epidemic of Ebola in eastern DR Congo that claimed more than 2,200 lives before it ended in June 2020 after 22 months.
A military court in North Kivu on 8 March handed down the death sentence to 16 fugitives, including Dr Jean-Paul Mundama, who were charged with terrorism and criminal association, attorneys familiar with the case said.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has not carried out executions since a moratorium was declared in 2003.
Lawyer Jean-Marie Vianney Muhindo Kanzira told AFP that Mouzoko was allegedly the victim of jealousy by local doctors. Local doctors earned an Ebola bonus of US$20 per day, whereas foreign doctors in senior positions could pick up more than US$20,000 per month, according to an investigation last December by a news website, Les Jours.
After meeting with four other local doctors who were angry about the different status, Mundama allegedly gave US$700 to a former militiaman, with the promise of US$20,000 more, if he and others “got the foreigners to flee,” Les Jours said.
Eight other defendants were present at the weeklong trial. Of these, two militiamen were jailed for five years, and a second doctor, Gilbert Kasereka Kasisivahwa, was handed three years for criminal association.

10 March 2021 :

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo should quash the death sentences imposed in absentia on two whistleblowers who provided information on corruption, Human Rights Watch declared on 9 March 2021.
Congolese authorities should instead investigate the allegations of criminal activity reported by Gradi Koko and Navy Malela, two former bank employees who exposed alleged illegal financial practices and money laundering.
Koko and Malela both worked in the audit department of Afriland First Bank CD, the Congolese subsidiary of Afriland First Bank, whose headquarters are in Cameroon. Koko said that in 2018 his superiors at the bank directly threatened him after he reported serious financial irregularities internally. In the face of these threats, he and Malela shared a trove of data and documents with the Platform for the Protection of African Whistleblowers (PPLAAF), a nongovernmental organization based in France. The information they provided led to a series of investigative reports in July 2020 by PPLAAF, Global Witness, and media outlets, including Bloomberg, Le Monde and Haaretz.
“Congolese authorities have made a mockery of the rule of law by prosecuting two whistleblowers for revealing information of major public interest that’s critically important to Congolese institutions,” said Thomes Fessy, senior Congo researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Their convictions should be quashed, and their revelations should be the basis for independent and impartial investigations.”
The published reports allege that Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler, a longtime friend of former Congo President Joseph Kabila, established a money laundering network with Afriland First Bank CD at its center. The scheme purportedly helped Gertler evade United States government sanctions against him and to acquire new mining assets in Congo.
Koko fled Congo in 2018 and sought asylum in Europe; Malela followed in early 2020. On 26 February 2021, they revealed that they were the source of the reports.
“I am not an armed rebel chief and my denunciations are useful to Congo, so why should I be sentenced to death?” Koko told Human Rights Watch by phone. “I fear reprisals, and I fear for my family in Kinshasa.”
On 25 February, representatives for Afriland and Gertler told journalists at a news conference in Kinshasa that the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Kinshasa had sentenced the whistleblowers to death in absentia on 7 September for “forgery,” “theft,” “private corruption,” “breach of professional secrecy,” and “criminal conspiracy.” Neither Malela nor Koko – or their lawyer – had knowledge of the court hearing. The trial violated the men’s right to a fair trial under international law, Human Rights Watch said.