Kinshasa, February 10th of 2027.

Since 2022, the attempt to assassinate Moïse Katumbi has been haunting the President and all of the politicians in the DRC. After the creation of the anti-corruption police force, the OPCCR, the general law enforcement in the DRC increased in its quality. The OPCCR had used Operation Black Gold as a jumpstart to the world of Congolese corruption, and it had led to a massive network of corruption – unproven corruption – that would confuse the minds of even the most experienced anti-corruption officials in the nation.

After the indictment and conviction of a middle management employee in Cohydro, the tangles involved all kinds of people, from the DA to the Kabilists, to the national Congolese industries, you can name it, and corruption will most certainly appear.

After investigating pieces of under-reported finances from Jonas Nzemba, the OPCCR found traces of a small, but promising, investment funds from Emmanuel Shadary in 2007; while this is extremely small, an amount of US$6 thousand, it started to unravel a thread that could officially bring down a major empire of corruption.

Throughout 2026, after Black Gold, the OPCCR officers were hard at work and began to investigate all of the companies of which Shadary had any influence, had any funding, had any presence; the results were still foggy at first, but on November of 2026, a breakthrough had impressed and shocked officers from the OPCCR.

Under-reported income, misplaced party funds, and reports from whistleblowers that Shadary had reportedly provided favorable contracts to politicians associated with Joseph Kabila in more ways than others; but the most shocking of all, was a traced outlet of money, specifically, US$10 thousand in Congolese money, delivered to an account which wasn’t tied to an actual bank owner, but due to a careless act from the receiver of this money, it was eventually traced to two police officers.

The Investigation

In December, month-long investigations took place, with interrogations spanning three weeks. The OPCCR had to use all of their possible techniques on Kalongo and Bibuwa in order to ascertain that they had, indeed, obtained that money from that specific bank account. The name on the bank account was François N’Kunga, which, according to further investigation and door-knocking, was a dead end. Security footage inside the bank also proved itself fruitless.

It took clever, but careful, interrogation and usage of wording, to ascertain that Bibuwa had indeed obtained US$5 thousand from the bank account – and he had implicated his partner Kalongo as well.

Now, the investigation took another turn; it was about investigating the use of these US$5 thousand; the officers barely spoke after confessing to receiving the money, and OPCCR was sifting through archives as fast as possible – time was running out.

Throughout the months of January and February, the trail was becoming colder, until Jean-Pierre Lufuluambo found something interesting; the officers were paid US$5 thousand each, but the “Why” is the most interesting question; after intense questioning from the officers, Lufuluambo managed to arrange a written confession by officer Bibuwa – he had received a bribe to remove vital criminal information from a crime scene.

Now, while this was not necessarily uncommon, he had found something even more interesting; the aforementioned crime scene was the attempted murder of Moïse Katumbi in 2022; the dates in the bank coincided with it, while the murder was attempted on Dec. 18, the money had been deposited on Dec. 16 and removed at 5:06 pm on Dec. 17, which was intriguing, to say the least.

Further information on the removed evidence, investigators remarked that they had “a major suspicion about the removal of a personal computer”; due to the fact that the apartment was unremarkable from further pictures and reports by investigators, it seemed likely to the OPCCR officer that the computer was removed for some reason.

The computer could be corroborated with the written confession as the evidence removed by the two officers on behest of Shadary, who paid a bribe to the two officers in order to remove the computer; there was little the officer could manage to tell the OPCCR about the contents of the computer, they had smashed it to pieces and disappeared with it all over the Congo, virtually inexistent. Regardless of that, the OPCCR still had evidence, solid evidence, that Shadary was involved in an attempted murder of a political candidate and corruption. The corruption charges came from investigations by the OPCCR on crimes perpetrated by Shadary during his tenure as Minister of the Interior and Security.

The Charges

Emmanuelle Shadary was charged with corruption as Minister of Interior and Security, with evidence corroborating that he had involved other political entities, including François-Joseph Mobutu Nzanga Ngbangawe, the eldest son of Mobutu Sese Seko, the previous dictator of the Congo.

Alongside corruption, he was charged with excessive use of violence during the protests in Kinshasa in January-February of 2017 and, to conclude, bribery of a police officer, the latter of which implicates him into a charge of attempted murder of a political candidate.

This breakthrough in investigations was shocking, and it sparked a massive storm. The OPCCR started to write warrants, freeze assets, it was a mess; the drafts were coming through, out and about, and in the mess, a leak occurred.

Whoever the whistleblower was, no one managed to figure it out, but it was leaked that a corruption investigation which implicated Nzanga Ngbangawe came out to the presses – and he was quick to announce a small trip to France for “a few months”.

Shadary had no idea what hit him when the OPCCR went inside his house; seizure of assets, complete searches, his enterprises and his finances were reviewed and audited until every single penny had been counted, and there had been a seizure of at least US$3 mn in corruption money, be it from bribes, from overcharged goods, from fraud, everything was there.

For Shadary himself, the charges were astronomically high for a man of his age; at 67, the prosecutors had announced that he would be charged between 35 and 40 years inside a penitentiary; of course, the OPCCR and the prosecutors had offered Shadary a reduction of his charges to between 20 and 25 years of prison, if he was able to name new suspects in the attempted murder of Katumbi, and other associates of his corruption schemes.

Shadary was a nervous wreck – how could his entire empire, carefully nurtured over so many years, flat out collapse? It was terrifying to see; but still, with charges of 20-25 he could still see the light of day, he could still receive the potential of better treatment; he looked at the OPCCR prosecutors and nodded, Shadary would cooperate as a state’s witness.

Summary

The OPCCR, the Congolese anti-corruption agency, has suceeded in performing the arrest and prosecution of a major political figure in the DRC for attempted murder and corruption; this is a major blow in the war against corruption in the DRC. Furthermore, Mobutu’s eldest son has fled the nation to France, whilst other corrupt officials are still at large.