Congo asset strip

Congo asset strip

27th February 2006

Two years ago we posted an article about a man called Dan Gertler, alleging that he was involved in ripping-off diamonds from the Democratic Republic of Congo, after concluding a distinctly dodgy deal with the DRC military.

[for the story see: http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press269.htm]

Gertler has again come to roost in the same country but in a sligtly different context as the head of a new mining company called GEC (Global Enterprises Corporate). This outfit, along with Kinross- Forrest - both registered in the British Virgin Isles tax haven - appears to have bagged the majority of the assets of what was once one of the world's biggest mining enterprises, Gecamines.

Gecamines is the company set up by dictator Mobutu in 1966 to absorb the ill-gotten, blood-drenched, assets of the notorious Belgian company, Union Minieres.

Despite an avowed attempt by the World Bank to ensure that now-laid-off workers in Gecamines are adequately provided for, following a typical Bank privatisation programme; and despite a plan which supposedly ensured that its resources would be used for the benefit of the Congolese, the assets of this huge copper-cobalt enterprise have effectively been sequestered by Kinross and GEC.

In response, the UK NGO Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) has, alongside two other European groups, shot-off a stiff protest letter to World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz.

So far "the Wolf" appears to have done nothing to rectify an appalling miscarriage of "resource justice".