Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of progress by the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo in reducing the risk of corruption among senior government officials in that country.

The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office recognises that corruption challenges persist in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and we welcome the DRC Government's commitment to tackle this issue. The UK has supported DRC state capacity building in two key government anti-corruption institutions that control public spending, to reduce the risk of corruption by senior government officials; the Cour des Compres (National Audit Office equivalent) and The Inspecteur General du Finance (IGF, translation: Department of Audit). The DRC has recently accredited 80 magistrates to the Cour des Compres, which increases their capacity to evaluate, judge and sanction on public sector financial mismanagement. The UK supported the Cour des Comptes in DRC between 2015-2018 and lobbied for accreditation of these magistrates. The IGF has also become a more effective and well-funded institution since President Tshisekedi was elected in 2018. Audit reports published by the IGF uncovered illegally allocated logging concessions and corruption in the state mining company GECAMINES. The UK supported IGF in their ability to perform audits between 2015 and 2018. The UK is planning new programming that will support improvements in public financial management including improving oversight of budget implementation in order to continue the UK's support to decrease the risk of corruption in DRC.