(Bloomberg) —
BGFIBank Group questioned the authenticity of millions of leaked documents that showed more than $100 million of public funds were channeled through its unit in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the family and associates of the nation’s former president.
The Gabonese lender also threatened to prosecute anyone found to have leaked confidential data, according to a statement posted on its website Wednesday.
The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, a Paris-based anti-corruption group, and the French news organization Mediapart obtained more than 3.5 million files covering nearly a decade of transactions at BGFI.
The documents were shared with five non-governmental organizations and a consortium of reporters from the European Investigative Collaborations network, Bloomberg News and other media outlets, which began publishing stories on Nov. 19 after reviewing the records for more than six months.
Read: Biggest African Bank Leak Shows Kabila Allies Looted Congo Funds
In its statement, BGFI acknowledged past accusations of governance problems at its Congo branch, which used to be minority-owned by a sister of former Congolese President Joseph Kabila and run by his brother. The bank forced both Kabila family members out in 2018, after a previous smaller data leak sparked similar complaints of corruption.
The bank “strongly condemns acts contrary to law and ethics that may have been committed in the past within its subsidiary BGFIBank RDC SA and of which its employees could possibly have been perpetrators or accomplices to varying degrees,” it said in the statement.
The lender restructured the ownership of the Congo unit in 2018, conducted an internal audit to identify methods that may have been used to circumvent controls, put in new management and filed a complaint with Congo’s chief prosecutor, according to the statement.
“The judicial authorities remain the only ones empowered to establish, in compliance with the law, the innocence or the guilt of the accused persons,” BGFI said.
Neither ex-President Kabila nor any member of his family responded to requests for comment over a five-week period.
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