Kabila rubbishes corruption claims against family, ready to handover

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s outgoing president, Joseph Kabila, has rubbished claims that members of his family were unduly profiting from mining concessions in the country.

He challenged those peddling such allegations to provide tangible evidence if they really had any. The most known such report is one published in 2016 by the Bloomberg news portal.

“I probably believe that people who write those reports live on another planet which is not this planet. Feel free to give me the names of those family members and those permits, they don’t exist.

Asked whether his wife and children were not holding mining rights, he responded: “Do you know how old my children are in order for them to have mining rights?

“That’s where stupidity begins, allow me to use the word. I hope that one of these days someone will come up with something that is tangible instead of them being allegations left and right,” he added.

Kabila was speaking in an interview with the BBC in Kinshasa. He also touched on other areas of interest like life after the presidency and the extent to which democracy had grown under his watch.

He said he would have a lot on his plate when he leaves the presidency adding that it was going to be easy to handover power to anyone who emerged winner of the December 23 polls which he said was going to be free and fair and that people were going to be allowed to vote freely.