Israeli billionaire miner added to US sanctions list for Congo ties

Israeli billionaire miner added to US sanctions list for Congo ties

22/12/2017

Dan Gertler accused of amassing fortune in corrupt Democratic Republic of Congo deals

Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire investor, has been

 added to a US list of people it described as serious

 human rights abusers and corrupt actors

Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire invested in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining sector, has been added to a US Treasury’s list of individuals under sanction, potentially squeezing his ability to conduct further business.

In an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, the Treasury included Mr Gertler in a list of 13 people it described as “serious human rights abusers and corrupt actors”. 

Mr Gertler, it said, had “amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals” in the DRC. He had, it said, used his close friendship with President Joseph Kabila “to act as a middleman for mining asset sales in the DRC, requiring some multinational companies to go through Gertler to do business with the Congolese state”. 

Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, said: “The Treasury and our inter-agency partners will continue to take decisive and impactful actions to hold accountable those who abuse human rights, perpetrate corruption and undermine American ideals.”

The action was taken as part of the so-called Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which was passed by Congress last year.

As a result of Mr Gertler’s actions, the Treasury said, between 2010 and 2012 alone, the DRC, one of the world’s poorest countries, may have lost more than $1.36bn in revenues from the underpricing of mining assets that were sold to offshore companies linked to the Israeli businessmen.

It described one deal, in 2013, in which Mr Gertler had allegedly sold rights to an oil block to the DRC government for $150m, even though he had paid the government just $500,000 for the same block. “Gertler has acted for or on behalf of Kabila, helping Kabila organise offshore leasing companies,” it said. 

Mr Gertler could not immediately be contacted for comment. In the past, he has said that he has never paid bribes and that he should be awarded a Nobel prize for helping to bring millions of dollars of revenue to Congo. 

Elisabeth Caesens, director of Resource Matters, a Brussels-based non-governmental organisation, and an expert on the Congolese mining industry, said: “This is the first time that a US official institution explicitly accuses Dan Gertler of corrupt dealmaking in the Democratic Republic of Congo and imposes direct sanctions on him and 17 of his companies.”

The US action, she said, gave a “very strong warning for any company that has done, is doing or considers doing business with him in Congo”. 

In settlement documents released in September by US authorities in a scandal involving Och-Ziff, the New York hedge fund, it was alleged that an “Israeli businessman” — whose description clearly matched Mr Gertler — had paid bribes to Mr Kabila in order to obtain special access to mining rights in the DRC. Yet Mr Gertler had not been explicitly named, said Ms Caesens, adding that Thursday’s US action represented a considerable advance.

The action could also affect oil blocks owned by Mr Gertler, she said. “Gertler-affiliated companies that own oil licences in eastern Congo also feature on the sanctions list. This will arguably make it impossible for Gertler and his holding to find an investor willing to develop the blocks.” 

In March, Glencore, the Swiss mining and trading conglomerate, severed its ties with Mr Gertler after agreeing to pay him $534m for his share of two jointly owned copper mines. 

A spokesman for Glencore on Thursday said the company “complies with applicable sanctions”, meaning that royalty payments from Kamoto Mine, the operator of the hugely profitable Katanga copper and cobalt mine, would have to stop. 

Analysts said that the sanctions against Mr Gertler, an alleged financier of Mr Kabila, could hit the Congolese leader hard, potentially ratcheting up the pressure on him to hold long overdue elections. The international community has been urging Mr Kabila, who has run the country since 2001, to hold elections that were originally scheduled for December 2016 but which have never taken place. 

As well as Mr Gertler, others on the US sanctions list included Yahya Jameh, the former leader of Gambia who fled the country earlier this year after losing an election that ended his 23 years in power. Mr Jameh, who is in exile in Equatorial Guinea, had “a long history of engaging in serious human rights abuses and corruption”, the Treasury said.

David Pilling

Financial Times

Congo's hidden 'mega-crisis' is most neglected of 2017: poll

Congo's hidden 'mega-crisis' is most neglected of 2017: poll

20/12/2017

Joseph Kabila 

With millions of people on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and children facing unspeakable violence, the Democratic Republic of Congo was the most neglected crisis in 2017, according to a survey of aid agencies.

Overshadowed by the Syrian war and Rohingya refugee exodus from Myanmar, Congo barely made headlines despite horrific violence that has erupted in the centre of the vast country, they said.

The Central African Republic, with its "off the charts" vulnerability, and Yemen - ravaged by war and hunger - ranked behind Congo in the Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of 20 leading aid organisations.

"A massive humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in the Congo almost unnoticed," said Mark Smith, World Vision's emergencies chief.

"The scale and brutality of what is happening to children in hard to reach places is almost unimaginable."

An insurrection against the government in the Greater Kasai region has displaced more than 1 million people in what the Norwegian Refugee Council called a "mega-crisis".

Food shortages have left millions hungry with hundreds of thousands of children at risk of dying.

Agencies have received accounts of mass killings, rapes and beheadings. There have also been reports of horrendous attacks on babies and young children.

Children as young as 10 have been recruited by armed groups, while others left orphaned are sleeping alone in forests.

Kasai's poor roads and telecommunications have made access challenging, contributing to its invisibility, agencies said.

Provinces in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo also remain volatile. Across the country, 13.1 million people need assistance, nearly a third of whom are displaced.

World Vision said it believed years of repeated and overlapping conflicts in Congo meant it had "fallen off people's radar" - a view echoed by others.

"DELIBERATE STARVATION"

Congo was named by nearly half those polled, but many said there had been such a plethora of crises in 2017 - with at least four countries at risk of famine - that it was hard to pick the most neglected.

Oxfam named Central African Republic (CAR) as "the most forgotten of forgotten crises" with 2.4 million people needing help "in a country that most people don't even know exists".

CAR has been racked by violence since mainly Muslim rebels ousted the president in 2013, provoking a backlash from Christian militias.

The U.N. refugee agency said 1.1 million people - nearly a quarter of the population - had fallen through the cracks and warned the "calamitous situation" would worsen unless a massive funding shortfall was addressed.

Although Yemen has made headlines this year, agencies said the coverage did not begin to reflect the enormity of what was happening.

"The lack of public awareness ... is truly shocking given the sheer scale of suffering and deliberate starvation of much of the population," said Jean-Michel Grand, executive director of Action Against Hunger UK.

This week marked 1,000 days since the escalation of a conflict which has uprooted more than 2 million people, left 8.4 million close to famine and triggered a massive cholera epidemic.

The warring parties have attacked schools and hospitals and restricted aid.

"The past year has been incredibly harrowing," said Islamic Relief Worldwide CEO Naser Haghamed.

"Despite an increase in media coverage and political intervention, the true scale of the emergency is still not dominant in the consciousness of the wider world."

International Medical Corps said the level of need was "unfathomably immense" and the situation almost entirely manmade.

"WEAPON OF WAR"

Two agencies flagged the displacement crisis in the Lake Chad Basin, which was voted the most neglected emergency in last year's poll.

An eight-year campaign by Boko Haram militants to create an Islamist caliphate has affected millions of people.

With most coverage focused on Nigeria, Plan International singled out the impact on its forgotten neighbour Niger where more than 400,000 people need help.

It said militants were killing and threatening teachers, forcing children to miss school and raising their vulnerability to sexual violence, abduction and enslavement.

"These children deserve the world's attention. The violence which is robbing a generation of an education and forcing them to grow up in a world of fear has got to stop," said Plan's humanitarian director Roger Yates.

With starvation threatening millions in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, one agency picked famine as the year's most neglected crisis.

Mercy Corps' humanitarian chief Michael Bowers said food was increasingly being used as a "weapon of war" with little action taken by the international community.

"Global hunger is on the rise for the first time this century," he said. "We fear 2018 will look much like 2017 without a massive drive to fight back hunger."

BY THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION