A senior Democratic Republic of Congo minister and his wife secretly controlled more than a third of shares in a construction company that won nearly $70 million in state highway contracts, according to a bombshell investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Guy Loando, currently the DRC’s Minister of State for Regional Planning, held the substantial stake alongside his wife in Société d’Ingénierie Congolaise (SIC) when the newly-formed company secured its first $25 million roadworks contract in 2019—just weeks after its establishment.
The revelations expose a web of potential conflicts of interest at the highest levels of the Congolese government, with anti-corruption experts calling it a “textbook example” of public contract capture by political elites.
At the time SIC won its initial contract, Loando served as a senator. The company would go on to secure additional subcontracts on Chinese-led highway projects, bringing total deals to nearly $70 million between 2019 and 2021.
In a move that raises further questions about the arrangement’s legitimacy, Loando transferred his family’s stake to his wife’s brother-in-law, Baby Mambo Kapaye, shortly after SIC secured its first major contract. OCCRP investigators found that Kapaye maintains longstanding business and family ties to the Loandos.
The contracts involved rehabilitation and anti-erosion work on a vital traffic artery in the DRC, but OCCRP found the deals were awarded under “highly opaque circumstances” with no evidence of competitive bidding.
The highway project’s complexity deepens with its connection to Chinese business interests. The consortium leading the overall highway redevelopment is controlled by SOPECO, owned by Chinese business magnate Cong Maohuai.
Critically, Loando previously worked as a lawyer for Cong and has publicly described the Chinese businessman as his “mentor”—a relationship that adds another layer of potential conflict to the already questionable contract arrangements.
Internal documents obtained by OCCRP reveal that the DRC’s financial watchdog has accused the Chinese-led consortium of failing to declare millions in toll revenues and artificially inflating construction budgets, including for sections where SIC was involved.
Despite these serious allegations, no legal action or charges have been brought against any of the parties involved.
Transparency International’s vice-chair Ketakandriana Rafitoson delivered a scathing assessment of the arrangement when confronted with OCCRP’s findings.
“The arrangement could give the appearance that a government official was ‘building a facade’ to obscure any potential benefit from a commercial activity,” Rafitoson said. “It gives the impression of a family’s apparent ‘capture of a public contract’ and is a textbook example of a possible ‘conflict of interest.'”
Legal experts and anti-corruption organisations warn that the case highlights systemic risks of high-level officials using concealed ownership structures to profit from government infrastructure contracts.
When confronted with the investigation’s findings, Loando denied receiving personal benefits from SIC, emphasising he was not a shareholder during the later contract awards.
However, both Loando and Kapaye declined to answer specific questions about whether Kapaye was acting as a proxy for the minister’s family or whether any financial transactions occurred for the share transfers.
The OCCRP investigation exposes what researchers describe as “unprecedented risks” of conflicts of interest in the awarding and execution of state infrastructure contracts in the DRC.
The case illuminates how political elites may be systematically capturing public resources through complex ownership arrangements designed to obscure their financial interests while maintaining plausible deniability.
As the DRC continues to struggle with governance challenges and infrastructure development needs, the investigation raises fundamental questions about transparency and accountability in the country’s approach to major public works projects.
The full scope of similar arrangements across other government contracts remains unknown, suggesting this case may represent just the tip of a much larger iceberg of corruption in DRC’s infrastructure sector.
