Syrian businessman Albert Karaziwan's Semlex to stand trial over corrupt Congo passport deal

Semlex, the Belgian biometric document maker founded and run by Syrian-Belgian businessman Albert Karaziwan, will stand trial in Brussels over allegations of corruption, money laundering and tax fraud linked to its contract to produce passports for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Brussels Council Chamber ordered Semlex and 13 other defendants to trial on Aug. 31, according to civil parties in the case. A spokesperson for Belgium's federal prosecutor's office confirmed that Semlex and an unspecified number of its employees were among those referred to the criminal court, but gave no further details. The civil parties named no defendant other than Semlex.

The allegations have not been proven in court. Semlex did not respond to requests for comment on the decision, and no trial date has been set.

The civil parties, who include 51 Congolese citizens and anti-corruption groups, joined the criminal investigation in 2020. They say the case will be the first trial of a Belgian company for bribing foreign public officials, though Reuters said it could not independently confirm that.

"We have a right to know where our money went. This trial will finally shed light on the matter," said Fred Bauma, a Congolese human rights activist and a claimant in the case.

The $185 passport

Semlex produced passports for Congo, a country of 116 million people, from 2015 to 2025. The contract drew scrutiny after a 2017 Reuters investigation found that the price of a Congolese passport had nearly doubled under the deal to $185, making it one of the most expensive passports in the world. Congo had previously charged $100.

The civil parties say $60 from each passport went to a company owned by a relative of then-President Joseph Kabila, and that the scheme diverted about $60 million in total. Whether those payments amounted to bribery, money laundering or legitimate commercial arrangements is a question the court will now have to decide.

Karaziwan was closely tied to the contract's launch. He appeared alongside Kabila at an event in Kinshasa in November 2015 to unveil Congo's new biometric passports.

Belgian police searched Semlex's Brussels offices and Karaziwan's home in January 2018 as part of the federal prosecutor's investigation. When the Reuters reports were published, Semlex's lawyer, François Koning, said Karaziwan would not comment and claimed unnamed third parties were manipulating the news agency to damage him and the company.

Passports for a dozen countries

Karaziwan was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1958, one of eight children, and founded Semlex in 1992. From the early 2000s, the Brussels-based company won contracts to produce biometric documents for governments around the world, and it has supplied passports or other identity documents to more than a dozen African countries. In 2019, it won the contract to produce national identity cards for Côte d'Ivoire.

Semlex and Karaziwan have long faced accusations of winning contracts through political connections and charging high prices for documents in order to pay off officials. They have denied wrongdoing.

The Congo case is not the only controversy involving the company. Semlex printed passports for the Comoros, the Indian Ocean island nation, which in 2008 introduced an economic citizenship program that was later at the center of a corruption scandal. Some of those passports ended up with foreign buyers, including Iranian businessmen.

Karaziwan built unusually close ties with the Comoros government. Former President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi appointed him a special adviser and ambassador-at-large for the Gulf countries. He held three Comoros diplomatic passports, which were later cancelled under President Azali Assoumani. He twice traveled with the Comoros delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. In 2018, Comoros law enforcement raided Semlex's offices in the country as part of an investigation into passport sales.

A test for Belgium

The trial is also a test for Belgian prosecutors. The court referral follows years of criticism from activists and the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that Belgium has done too little to enforce laws against bribery abroad.

The civil parties called the referral a significant step for a justice system they said had previously failed to enforce anti-bribery laws properly.