Lumumba's Efforts Against Corruption sends Him Into Exile

Jean-Jacques Lumumba
The fight against corruption in African politics remains fruitless, due to the fact that corrupt politicians smuggling money into Europe, are often assisted by European governments.

Millions of dollars taken from Africa go to banking institutions in Switzerland and Luxemburg. However, things are changing as some European countries are preventing the saving of money in foreign banks by African leaders.

Jean-Jacques Lumumba, whose great-uncle was the first democratically elected prime minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, in his country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was head of a Gabonese loan bank when he detected suspicious financial transfers of money to foreign banks.

Jean-Jacques Lumumba simply refused to close his eyes. He revealed how Kabila's relatives and faithful people channeled money from the national bank into their own accounts.

Millions of dollars, from the National Election Commission, were channeled through the bank where he worked, towards the then President Kabila. BGFI is a Gabonese bank which Congolese branch was in the hands of President Joseph Kabila 's brother, Francis Selemani Mtwale.

As an experienced banker, he had to put affairs in order and ensure that the procedures for granting credits were in line with international guidelines. He noticed that things were wrong but he didn’t have access to all the information then.

In 2014, when he became the director of the credit department, he had access to all the files. "I noticed that many shops were not allowed to see the light of day but it took a year before I could put the pieces together. "

"The granting of a loan must take place according to certain rules. The analysis of credit is not very different from that of a person. You need to understand what, how and why money is moving," he explains.

"To understand that, you also have to look at how it relates to other loans, transactions, and customers. You have to analyze the network to understand the interests and intentions, just like with people."

In Africa, like many places around the globe, Lumumba’s effort to stop corruption in his country, puts his life in danger, forcing him to flee to France.

"It is three years today that I have been living in exile in France," said Lumumba. He became a whistleblower because he knows how corruption affects the growth of a country.

Driven by the sense of injustice, he went to Brussels and together with other African activists; he launches a Pan-African platform that fights corruption. "Corruption is a brake on the progress of the African continent," according to him.

With UNIS, we want to show that every citizen can be part of the fight against corruption," says Jean-Jacques Lumumba