Perenco, a multinational, is to be held to account by the judiciary. Following a three-year procedure, the French oil group will be put on trial by the 34^th division of the judicial tribunal in Paris for “environmental harm”. The company, which is owned by the extremely wealthy Perrodo family, will face accusations of pollution in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in central Africa, where it extracts 20,000 barrels of oil per day. The stakes are high for the discreet company. The verdict, which will be pronounced by the tribunal in civil proceedings, may entail a heavy fine but also the repair of the damage caused to locals and ecosystems.

To understand why Perenco will be in the dock in a French court for the first time, we need to go back to 9 November 2022, when Disclose and Investigate Europe, together with EIF, released an investigation conducted over several months on the environmental harm caused by Perenco at the Muanda site, in the region of Congo central, in DRC. The article mentioned no fewer than 167 incidences of pollution over 15 years, sometimes involving drinking water contamination and respiratory diseases among locals.

Also on 9 November 2022, NGOs Sherpa and Friends of the Earth – France (Les Amis de la terre) sued Perenco before the 34th division of the tribunal, which specialises in corporate liability regarding social en environmental matters. The two NGOs demanded “reparations from the French oil company for the environmental harm caused in the Democratic Republic of Congo”. The environmental damage has continued, according to a confidential document seen by Disclose and Investigate Europe.

Explosive report                                        

The document, from June 2025, highlights “the effects of oil pollution [at]Perenco’s entire oil field”. The 21-page report, which we publish in full, was written by the members of a Congolese parliamentary committee who visited the company’s facilities in May  2025 following an accident at an oil storage site. The delegation established, on the one hand, that water at the site is unsafe for drinking, that the soil is so damaged that it is no longer fertile, and that pollution has “brought about the gradual disappearance of biodiversity”. It found, on the other hand, that gas drilling and flaring areas are not fenced off although they are close to residential areas.  

The Congolese members of parliament also noted “eye and skin complaints” among locals, and cited reports of “vomiting of blood” and “bloody diarrhoea”. They added that Perenco “took the liberty of cleaning the site ahead of the inspectors’ visit”. In other words, the company attempted to conceal from the authorities the consequences of the accident at its site.

In spite of the consistent evidence, the oil group, approached by Disclose and Investigate Europe, “strongly protests all the allegations from [Sherpa and Les Amis de la terre] which it contends are inadmissible and flawed”. The company argues that it cannot be held responsible in France for harm caused by its local subsidiary, Perenco REP, which was run at some stage by the father of the former minister for ecological transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. “This is a strategy that Perenco uses systematically in an attempt to shirk environmental responsibilities for its activities abroad,” says Théa Bounfour, a lawyer in charge of the case at NGO Sherpa. 

The forthcoming trial could put an end to this strategy and pave the way for more lawsuits. The company, which has subsidiaries in some 15 countries, has faced accusations by NGOs in 10 of them.

And there is more. In addition to this case, the national financial prosecution service has launched a preliminary investigation, as revealed by news magazine Challenges, into the allocation of shares in a Perenco oil concession to Julienne Sassou N’Guesso, the daughter of the autocratic president of neighbouring Republic of Congo. A very profitable deal revealed by Disclose and Investigate Europe. Meanwhile, the company is extracting the last drops of crude oil from wells at the end of their life cycle, its speciality.  

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Investigation: Leïla Miñano and Maxence Peigné
Editor-in-Chief: Mathias Destal
Editing: Pierre Leibovici
Translation from French: Béatrice Murail
Image: Alexis Huguet / AFP