A French court found that a lawyer for Afriland First Group SA’s unit in the Democratic Republic of Congo defamed two former bank employees who leaked data to anti-corruption groups and media outlets including Bloomberg News.
Eric Moutet was judged to have defamed Gradi Koko Lobanga, the former head of Afriland Congo’s internal-audit division, and Navy Malela Mawani, its comptroller, for saying they’d fabricated the leaked documents that included information on accounts linked to sanctioned individuals including Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler. The court also said Moutet defamed the Paris-based Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, known as Pplaaf, which assisted the two men.
Moutet said on June 3 that he’d based his statements on a separate Congolese court judgment from 2020 that he says convicted the men of theft, forgery and violations of bank secrecy, and that the court should have seen it as a legitimate source for his claims. That procedure -- which neither Koko nor Malela nor their representatives attended -- also condemned the men to death by default for criminal association, though Congo has not applied the death penalty since 2003.
Moutet, who was ordered to pay a total of 9,000 euros ($9,620) in damages and fees, said he has already lodged an appeal at the Paris Court of Appeals.
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