[Firestarter]

In March 2005 Gertler’s DGI (Dan Gertler International) in partnership with Beny Steinmetz’s Global Resources (BSGR) formed Global Enterprises Corporate (GEC), with former Congo mines minister, Simon Tuma-Waku as “special adviser”.
Steinmetz was once named as the biggest buyer of De Beers diamonds.

An October 2005 presidential decree ratified the KOV agreement between Gécamines and GEC. Gertler and Steinmetz placed GEC’S 75% share in KOV into the newly founded Nikanor Plc. at the Isle of Man (UK). Nikanor executive CEO became Jonathan Leslie (Rio Tinto’s former head of copper operations).
In July 2006, with JP Morgan Cazenove acting as advisors and brokers, Nikanor’s IPO raised $400 million on the London AIM, based on its 75% stake in KOV. Nikanor achieved a market capitalization of $1.5 billion, and was hailed as the most valuable listing on AIM.
At that time, the 3 key stakeholders were listed as Beny Steinmetz (37%), the Gertner Family Trust (22%), and Dan Gertler (14.7%).

In April 2006, Gertler’s DGI took a major stake in Katanga-based cobalt-copper mining and services company DEM Mining.
In June 2006, Gertler’s DGI paid an alleged $60 million for the Mukondo mine, owned by controversial Zimbabwe-based businessmen John Bredenkamp and Billy Rautenbach. In 2002, Bredenkamp and Rautenbach were charged by the UN Panel of Experts report as conduits for bribes to President Robert Mugabe and other senior figures in Zimbabwe’s political and military elite.

Diamond dealer Dan Gertler was one of only 2 white men at the 2006 wedding of Congo president Joseph Kabila.
The other white man at Kabila’s wedding was Philippe de Moerloose, CEO and apparent owner of Demimpex, which holds sole Nissan distributorship in the Congo. De Moerloose has also supplied jets and other presidential toys to Kabila.

The NGO NIZA has argued that the World Bank’s interaction with the Congolese government had resulted in an “anarchistic and opaque privatisation process that has stripped Gécamines of all its assets. The parasitic company is now bound by countless contracts with, often dubious, private partners that contribute little or nothing to Gécamines or to the national treasury”: https://archive.is/20150405104550/http:/...-quandary/


Because Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler arranged mining assets to be sold at much lower prices than they were worth to offshore entities linked to him, the Congo lost more than $1.36 billion in revenues between 2010 and 2012.
In 2013, Gertler sold back to the Congo government drilling rights to an offshore oil block in Lake Albert for $150 million, after he had paid only half a million dollars for those rights.

In 2017, the US Department of Treasury issued sanctions against the Fleurette Group of Gertler for human rights abuse and corruption. Fleurette held substantial stakes in 2 mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Fleurette Group sold its Mutanda stake to Glencore: https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Interna...naire.html


It shouldn’t surprise anybody that the Netherlands is also involved in the plundering of Congo…
Fleurette Properties Limited was incorporated in Gibraltar and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This was through a construction that made it possible to select the most profitable tax laws of Gibraltar and the Netherlands.
In 2004, Dan founded the Gertler Family Foundation that supposedly invested millions in health care, infrastructure and education; this was also placed under sanctions by the US government.

In 2010, for this construction, the Dutch Rob Drieduite was chosen as chairman of Fleurette Properties.
Both the Gertler Family Foundation and Fleurette Group are part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which supposedly aims for more transparency in the global commodities trade.
Drieduite is the point of contact for Fleurette Group for questions on how they can operate ”transparent” in the global commodities trade. When the “reputable” Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant contacted Drieduite with questions on Fleurette and Gertler, he refused to talk.

Drieduite has also chaired the Dutch NV for the porno website maker Gamma Entertainment of Karl Bernard.
Drieduite has also worked for the MyGuide of former Philips CEO Roel Pieper that was bankrupted in 2009.

Just like so many others, Beny Steinmetz also used an opaque tax construction in the Netherlands, set up with the help of a former tax consultant of KPMG.

In 2000, Gertler’s International Diamond Industries (IDI) paid only $20 million to then Congolese president Laurent Kabila (father of Joseph) for a monopoly on Congolese diamonds worth $600 million a year (in Dutch): http://web.archive.org/web/2018100819553...~b475f31a/


Congolese Doctor Denis Mukwege made the following statement when he accepted the 2018 Nobel Prize for Peace:

My country is being systematically looted with the complicity of people claiming to be our leaders. Looted for their power, their wealth and their glory. Looted at the expense of millions of innocent men, women and children abandoned in extreme poverty. While the profits from our minerals end up in the pockets of a predatory oligarchy.
(…)
The Congolese people have been humiliated, abused and massacred for more than two decades in plain sight of the international community.
Today, with access to the most powerful communication technology ever, no one can say: “I didn’t know”.
(…)
Finally, after twenty years of bloodshed, rape and massive population displacements, the Congolese people are desperately awaiting implementation of the responsibility to protect the civilian population when their government cannot or does not want to do so. The people are waiting to explore the path to a lasting peace.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/...lecture-2/