Rental of old trains in the Congo, denunciations, reprisals, burial first class, recycling and clanism. Has the World Bank become a banana institution in Africa?
The laborious negotiations currently taking place between the Congo and the Bretton Woods institutions offer a small concentration of the limits of the development policies applied in Africa. As the work unfolds, we learn that the main ministers in charge of the file are subject to a presidential audit.
The measure would concern in particular the Minister of the Directorate of Major Works, Jean-Jacques Bouya, arrested recently in Parliament for the project of a road of 137 km, entirely financed but never delivered, according to the deputy Jean Claude Ibovi, president of the Movement for Democracy and Progress.
Strained by the protrusion of the deputy of a party yet member of the presidential movement, Jean-Jacques Bouya remains, despite everything, a central device for negotiations between Brazzaville and the Bretton Woods institutions.
To afford the maximum visibility in these delicate negotiations, the Congolese minister has attached the services of the Ivorian Eustache Ouayoro, former director of operations of the World Bank for the DRC and Congo, fired a few months before his retirement for serious violations of the rules of ethics and integrity.
Among the sanctions imposed on him in 2015, was the formal prohibition to no longer work with the World Bank as a contractor or subcontractor. Yet at the last meetings of the World Bank, the same Eustache Ouayoro was able to attend as members of the Congo delegation. Recruited by Minister Bouya, he is directly or indirectly involved in negotiations between the World Bank, the IMF and the Congo.
But is it the fault of Congo or, rather, that of the complex system of the World Bank? In meetings with Congo, Eustache Ouayoro stands in front of Makhtar Diop et Jan Walliser, respectivelyVice-President of the Bank for Sub-Saharan Africa (he is the first Francophone to hold this position) and former Director Strategy and Operations promoted to Vice President in charge of Fair Growth and Institutions. Makhtar Diop and Jan Walliser, two pillars of the institution’s African vision, had been duly notified of the dismissal of their subordinate.
Hence this question that arises in the corridors of the bank: why the two heavyweights of the sub-Saharan vision of the World Bank did not warn the Congolese government and the IMF, institution where they come from , of the Eustache Ouayoro case? Who protects who in this case where Congo, who plays his destiny, does not have much visibility?
In fact, Eustache seems to enjoy a clemency, passive at least, from his two superiors. Former representative of the bank in Congo, the Ivorian senior executive saw his troubles begin when his file landed on the desk of the President of the World Bank. This is where the investigation that led to his dismissal started.
The trains of death
In this still unresolved case, a Congolese consultant, René Bauman, a kind of whistleblower, was sacked. He had denounced cases of corruption, including the acquisition by the National Society of Congo Railways (SNCC) locomotives users in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in violation of the procedures of the bank.
Everything is based on the will of the Congolese government supported by the World Bank to develop rail transport in the province of Katanga as part of its multimodal transport development project started in April 2011 and financed by the World Bank for more than 200 million of dollars. In all, the project in which China took part was estimated at 600 million and also included the repair of 700 km of railways. Only!
The Middle Kingdom did not finally follow the program, making sense, according to the plea in abundance, to allow the optimal disposal of copper from the Katanga Mines. 3 October 2013, during a press conference, Vincent Tshiongo, Director of the National Railway Company of Congo (SNCC), said in a press conference that the proposed acquisition of 35 new locomotives through funding from the World Bank to the benefit of the SNCC and the Commercial Company Ports and Transport (SCPT) was on track. The Chinese option is therefore abandoned.
At the time, the type of new locomotive targeted was expected to cost about 1,5 million dollars. Under the guidance of the World Bank, the representatives of the DRC, probably motivated by the desire to save the taxpayer money, fall back on locomotives users at a rate of 1,3 million dollars per unit. The economy of 200 000 dollars made by locomotive is to be related to the age of the machine, 65 years. In fact, the South African supplier (intermediate reseller on behalf of an Australian company?) Is making the deal of the century.
Only downside, the file of the locomotives of Katanga raised a real rise of shields among the executives and local representatives of the World Bank. So, the project leader, Michel Mulungo, would have opposed the use of money from the bank for the acquisition of South African locomotives.
Never mind, Eustache Ouayoro will ask the company executing the contract to write directly to Makhtar Diop to request it. The latter has written to give his agreement, violating the rules of the World Bank. For a Vice-President should not interfere with the procurement (procurement of goods and services), reserved for lawyers and those responsible for the service to give their agreement objection or no objection.
Eustache will attend the reception of the locomotives in Lumumbasbi with the Prime Minister Matata Ponyo.
The case of the Katangese trains would have remained there if in April and May 2014, derailments and accidents in the south of the country had not made dozens of dead and wounded. The first hypotheses on the causes of the accidents had, among other things, evoked a rush of recently acquired locomotives.
As a reminder, the SNCC initially had ten user vehicles acquired in South Africa, only one of which operated normally. The other 9 served as spare parts. The World Bank which financed the SNCC’s exploitation activities as part of this opaque project played a role that the governments of Congo (DRC) and Africa would benefit from elucidating. Because, under our skies, any advice from the World Bank or the IMF is taken for cash.
The SNCC management who saw SylvestreIlungaIlunkamba’s successor to Vincent Tshiongo, the 17 March 2014, no doubt has some of the answer to these complex questions. Upon arrival at the head of the railway company, the finding was terrible: 30 locomotives with an average age of 40 years, 68 months of salary arrears for staff and 245 million dollars of debts and, on the technical plan, 1,5 derailment a day.
Blindness of the World Bank
How did the World Bank end up financing 35 million dollars of fuel and lubricants (a request for audit of this post will remain without follow-up) for the benefit of the SNCC as part of the multimodal transport project (PMT)? How, being engaged in the financing of the exploitation of the Congolese company, the queen of the institutions of Bretton Woods did she let accumulate so many months of arrears of wages? It should be said that this case of the SNCC did not have consequences to the extent of the damage suffered by the Congo, Congolese and Africans in general.
The omerta
In good old institution, jealous of its reputation, the World Bank has smothered the case by trying to get rid of all those who had the nerve to talk about it; some have resisted and have nightmares. Released in November 2013 after more than 8 years of collaboration and this while his contract had been renewed three months rather (August 2013), René Bauman officiated at the office of Kinshasa at the time of the facts. A no-nonsense consultant, he had discussed irregularities with his superiors and had been suspended a few months later on the pretext that he had criticized Eustache Ouayoro.
In an institutional world where silence and crushing serve as life insurance, the Congolese who was notified of a sudden suspension, had filed a complaint for “retaliation” before the administrative court of the Bank and won. after a long and intimidating procedure.
In its May 2016 deliberation, the World Bank court ruled in favor of the Congolese consultant, while pointing out that Eustache was always aware of Bauman’s complaints against Makhtar Diop. After an internal investigation, confrontations and hearings before the judges, René Bauman won his case and was compensated. The court did not go far in the cases evoked by Bauman’s fault, he argues, “substantial evidence”, according to the classic formula that accompanies the burial of embarrassing affairs.
But, despite the procedures and the omerta, questions remain unresolved. Why do Makhtar Diop and Jan Walliser, two IMF alumni, turn a blind eye to the case of Eustache Ouayoro, banished from the bank and then recycled back to the Congo to come back through the front door?
The changes in the Ethics and Business Conduct (EBC) department with the arrival of Ousmane Diagana, vice-president, and Sylvie Dossou, Eustache Ouayoro’s deputy at the material time, as director, did they a direct link to the current muzzle attempt from 2014? It should be noted that the same Ethics department had dismissed René Bauman in January 2014 before being disavowed two years later by the Bank’s administrative court.
Before the verdict of the court, the EBC department thought to have buried the case Eustache Ouayoro in the DRC, in August 2014, for “insufficient evidence”. It was finally the 30 March 2015 that this department concluded to the abuse of authority and misuse of the bank’s resources. The thorny Eustache Ouayro file has been sent to the Human Resources Department for the follow-up that we know.
World Bank-IMF, two sides of the same coin?
Becoming a kind of IMF bis on the continent with the resources of the International Association for Development (IDA), the institution’s premier system Bretton Woods has reduced the role of economists charged with Africa to the knowledge of conditionalities. Career management (theory of bureaucracy) outweighs innovation and daring.
In their lightning missions in Africa, the World Bank executives rarely go out of their way and face governments who take their advice for cash … There is no expertise in diversification policy at a time when African countries and their partners understand that without economic diversification, Africa will continue to export its unemployed to the West and fuel irredentist movements. The case of the multimodal transport project in the DRC is reminiscent of the deficiencies and opacity of an institution plagued by bureaucracy.
