Nine members of the family of President Félix Antoine Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been taken to court in Brussels, Belgium, over allegations of plundering minerals from the provinces of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba.
According to the Belgian newspaper La Libre, those accused include the President’s sisters, cousins, sons, brothers, and his wife, Denise Nyakeru Tshisekedi.
They are accused of being accomplices and beneficiaries of acts of corruption and other criminal misconduct.
On Tuesday, July 8, the lawsuit involving these nine members of Tshisekedi’s family was submitted to the Deputy Attorney General of Belgium, Ann Fransen.
The legal complaint was filed by lawyers Bernard and Brieuc Maingain, representing several NGOs from the Katanga region and four former executives of Gécamines, a state-owned mining company in the DRC.
In the complaint, the lawyers claimed that President Tshisekedi’s relatives were not the only ones involved in the looting of minerals from Katanga.
The complaint filed in Brussels targets individuals who hold Belgian nationality, since the courts in Belgium have the jurisdiction to prosecute them.
One of the plaintiffs added:
“More lawsuits may be filed in other countries where the looters of our national wealth come from.”
