IGF, APLC and Gécamines to investigate the sale of Metalkol royalties to Dan Gertler – DRC
The campaign “Congo is not for sale” (CNPAV) has, during a press conference held this Monday, December 07 in Kinshasa, urged the General Inspectorate of Finance and Gécamines to carry out a rigorous audit of the sale. royalties from Metalkol to Israeli businessman Dan Gertler.
In a video released on November 16, Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler announced that he now intended to bring the country’s wealth to the Congolese. Without giving details, he intends to “share” the royalties from Metalkol’s copper-cobalt company, revenues initially intended for Gécamines and the public treasury.
The CNPAV believes that the promise made by Dan Gertler cannot compensate for the enormous losses that the DRC has suffered as a result of its transactions over the past 20 years.
Indeed, the CNPAV warns that despite the countless denunciations, Gécamines signed yet another secret contract with Multree, a company affiliated with Gertler three years ago. This time, Gécamines gave it the royalties to which it was entitled in its Metalkol partnership. Royalties represent 2.5% of net revenues from Metalkol, a major copper-cobalt project near Kolwezi, and amount to more than $ 1.5 million per month – of which Gécamines is to transfer half to the public treasury according to the DRC’s finance laws.
For CNPAV member Jimmy Munguriek, over the past three years, Gertler and the former management of Gécamines have deployed several strategies to keep the transaction secret. The royalties contract, which was not published until the end of October 2020, stipulates that the copies and the very existence of the contract were to remain secret for at least three years, while Congolese law requires the publication of such contracts in 60 days after signature.
“We want the IGF to be able to launch deep investigations into the transactions between Gécamines and Metalkol in relation to royalties because they were concluded in very opaque circumstances. It was three years later that it was discovered that it was a sale after this contract was signed. And yet the contract which should be published in 2017 has been made confidential by the contractors. This is why we believe that this contract hides a lot of things. There is also some confusion in terms of the numbers, Gécamines talks about 55 million USD and Dan Gertler talks about 83 million USD. Suddenly, we no longer know if this sale was really made, ”explains Jimmy Munguriek.
The CNPAV promises to seize as of today the competent bodies namely the IGF, the APLC (Agency for the prevention of the fight against corruption) but also at the level of Gécamines itself so that they carry out actions which draw clear the consequences of these transactions.
Given the history of controversial transactions between Gertler and Gécamines, the CNPAV campaign indeed believes that the IGF should carry out a rigorous and independent audit before Gertler makes any transaction whatsoever on these royalties. If the audit reveals that Metalkol’s royalties were obtained illegally, any Congolese citizen who would buy them back risks becoming an accomplice in receiving stolen goods, warns the CNPAV.
This synergy bringing together several civil society platforms also denounces the privatization of the Metalkol project for the benefit of Dan Gertler and from which the DRC does not receive the necessary fallout in these royalties.
Remember that Dan Gertler is under sanction from the United States for corruption. He is suspected of having enriched himself thanks to “opaque and corrupt” transactions in the mining and oil sector thanks to his close friendship with ex-President Joseph Kabila. According to the Africa Progress Panel, he lost the Republic over $ 1.3 billion. Its modus operandi is well known: buying mining goods at a low price from a state-owned company like Gécamines thanks to its political connections, then reselling it at a multiple of the price to multinationals.
