How the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI, is abused by Sassou Nguesso.

The reasons why the Nguessos & Congolese government are members of EITI

All the ruling Nguesso family and the Congolese government that they(the Nguessos) are dominating want, when they join organisations such as EITI or Publish What You Pay, are the name tags of these organisations and the prestige that they generate. Conversely, they (the ruling Nguesso family and the Congolese government) will never implement the spirit of any of the organisations that she is a member. If the Nguesso family and Congolese government were serious, the regional bureau of EITI in Congo, would  been chaired by someone who is independent and  its board made up of people with the freedom to report honestly and independently, this in order to meet with the standards of EITI. Sadly in Congo Brazzaville, EITI Congo is everything but independent and most of the data that she feeds their (EITI) headquarters are false.

This is how it functions:

To begin with, how can EITI Congo be considered independent and upholds the standard of transparency when its chair, Michel Okoko is close to the ruling PCT party and the ruling Nguesso family?  How can EITI Congo be considered independent, when, most of those who are members of its board are either partner of the government or former members of local NGOs that have been bought over by the government? Worse, reports from EITI Congo on oil and mining companies are bogus.  This is how they are gathered: they are first collected manually with the consent of the companies that they are expected to audit and report accurately on their operations. Normally it would either have been gathered independently before comparing with the official ones. I was once present in the office of Michel Okoko, chair of EITI Congo, when I overheard him (Okoko) make phone calls to the executives of African Oil and Gas Congo, AGOC and Petroleum. In the conversation with the boss of AGOC, Mr Okoko, called the former requesting him to provide the exact reports or figures of the oil production that they (EITI Congo) should put in the report that they were to provide the EITI headquarters and which upon publication will become official regarding African Oil Gas Congo, AGOC activities. In normal circumstances, activities of EITI Congo or its evaluation reports should have been done independently rather than reporting statistics provided by oil and mining companies concern. Another observation that, I made while in Congo Brazzaville and also while visiting the office of EITI in Brazzaville is that, reports from companies in the liquid and solid mineral were collected manually, typed and sent first to headquarters of concern companies. After the evaluated companies have formally approved the information, it will be send back to EITI Congo and they will publish. It is this fictitious reports that don’t reflect the reality of the oil and mining sectors that are sent to EITI headquarters as authentic reports from oil companies operating in Congo Brazzaville.