Our correspondent in Kinshasa, Kamanda wa Kamanda Musembe

Cited in the major Congo Hold-up investigation, the companies Sud-Oil and Egal have caught the attention of the judicial authorities of the Democratic Republic of Congo. An information file has just been opened concerning these two entities. This is for justice to verify the claims contained in the investigation published by several international media outlets, including RFI, according to a senior magistrate.

And if the crimes denounced are proven, adds an expert, justice will be obliged to move to another stage, that is to say open a public prosecutor's register. The same expert adds that it should be expected that there could be charges and possible arrest of suspects, before the case is sent for hearing before the competent court.

Millions of dollars in public funds diverted

According to the authors of the Congo Hold-up investigation, the documents reviewed reveal large-scale embezzlement of public funds. Among the presumed beneficiaries are the former president of the Republic, Joseph Kabila and his associates. Sud-Oil and its satellite companies received, according to the investigation, more than 90 million dollars in public funds. While, still according to the authors of this same investigation, 43 million dollars from the Central Bank went, with the complicity of BGFI, to Egal, a company importing meat and fish.

►Read also: the full Congo Hold-up investigation