In the DRC, the state loses 800 million a year due to virtual jobs

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Inspector General of Finance (IGF) has uncovered massive fraud in the public payroll service, where dozens of fictitious employees cost the government $800 million a year.

According to the results of the audit of the salary file of civil servants, the IGF notes several irregularities with tens of thousands of fictitious employees. Every month, “the monthly deficit incurred by the public treasury is 148,999,749,440.95 Congolese francs (ie 66.2 million dollars),” the IGF said in a press release dated Thursday, referring to the audit carried out by its services.

For example, Congo’s public finance watchdog notes that more than 145,000 paying agents have “false, fictitious and fabricated registration numbers for payroll purposes.” Also, more than 40,000 agents are being paid without their names appearing in the notice list of the services employing them, while more than 90,000 agents “share the same registration number with other paying agents”.

“Mafia Network”

The IGF has promised to send judicial authorities a list of 961 state agents involved in this “mafia network”. Already, “certain cases of flagrant irregularities in the pay of state services are being deactivated”, added the same source.

In 2023, the DRC’s budget is estimated at 16 billion dollars. Despite the abundance of natural resources in this country, poverty is rampant. Nearly two-thirds of the country’s roughly 100 million people live on less than $2.15 a day, which is set as the international poverty line, according to the World Bank. The country is ranked 169 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2021 ranking.

(AFP)