Glencore will stop paying mining royalties to an Israeli businessman in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the US Treasury imposed sanctions on the group’s former business partner.
The Treasury yesterday issued sanctions forbidding US entities from entering into transactions with Dan Gertler, described as a “billionaire who has amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals” in the DRC. Any assets held by Mr Gertler in the US will be frozen.
Mr Gertler, originally a diamond trader, had used a close friendship with Joseph Kabila, the Congolese president, “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