DRC Suspends 2 China Trading Companies Over Conflict Minerals

The Democratic Republic of Congo has suspends two China-based companies from mineral mining and trading in the country for suspected involvement in the business of conflict minerals, anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness said in a statement late Monday.

The two privately-owned companies, TTT Mining — which has an export arm CMM — and Huaying Trading Company, are suspected of buying minerals without doing due diligence on their supply chains to ensure that they did not purchase conflict minerals, Global Witness said, adding that the two companies have operations in the DRC’s eastern North Kivu province.

North Kivu’s governor, Julian Paluku, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

According to Global Witness, the DRC government has said the move was a preventative measure and has instructed provincial authorities to launch an investigation into the matter.  “The Congolese government’s decision to suspend minerals traders for failing to do due diligence sends a strong message to other companies exporting minerals from eastern DRC that they must source responsibly, or face sanctions,” Sophia Pickles at Global Witness said in a statement. “The government should publish the findings of the investigation as soon as possible.”

The suspension follows a DRC government directive issued in September 2011 requiring all mining and mineral trading companies operating in the country to carry out supply-chain due diligence, in line with international standards set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, to ensure their purchases are not supporting warring parties in the eastern DRC. In February this year, this directive was enacted into law.

This week’s crackdown followed a November 2011 report by the UN Group of Experts on the DRC, including findings indicating that TTT Mining and Huaying had made purchases that financed armed groups and criminal networks within the DRC army, Global Witness said. But the statement added that when contacted by Global Witness, an unnamed TTT Mining official denied any wrongdoing on the part of the company.

In 2010, the US passed a Dodd-Frank consumer protection act aimed at addressing the trade in conflict minerals mined in the DRC and other neighboring countries, which are used in electronics, and fuel the violence and mass rape in these countries.

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Congo Official Says “Foreign Interests” Fueling Conflict

The top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says he is seeking new war crimes charges against a militia leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bosco Ntaganda, known as the “Terminator,” has been wanted by the court at The Hague since 2006 for recruiting child soldiers in the district of Ituri.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters Monday in New York that he wanted to add charges against Ntaganda, including crimes against humanity and intentional attacks against civilians. Ntaganda, who is in hiding, leads the rebel National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP). Renewed fighting between the military and rebels led by Ntaganda erupted in late April.

Moreno-Ocampo also announced he is seeking a warrant against another militia leader, Sylvestre Mudacumura, for violence in Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces. Mudacumura is the commander of a Congo-based rebel group, the FDLR, or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

In another development Monday, Congo’s information minister says “foreign interests” are playing a role in fighting in his country. Lambert Mende told VOA those elements have an interest in destabilizing the country, but that there is no reason to think the DRC’s neighbors are involved. He said the country’s defense minister is visiting Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi on a fact-finding mission.

The United Nations says thousands of people have fled the DRC’s North Kivu province to escape recent violence there. Army desertions have left much of both North and South Kivu without regular military protection. Mende told VOA his government is concerned about refugees who have fled into neighboring countries. “We have something like 7,500 in Rwanda, where our governor for North Kivu was sent by the president to see what is happening with them. And, we have 3,000 who escaped to Uganda, and our government will send, I think tomorrow or the day to follow, to see what is happening and to prepare their way back at home.”

Also Monday, the United Nations says seven U.N. peacekeepers were injured in South Kivu by a crowd of protesters. It said the crowd was protesting recent attacks by rebels from the FDLR.

-Voice of America

Violence Keeps Congolese in Fear

In the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, many are fleeing the violence between FARDC troops and Ntaganda’s rebel forces. The displaced are men and women, young and old. And they all have the same look on their face – of fear.

Mattresses on their heads, tired children on their backs, goats and a few pots in hand. This is just a snapshot of the displaced population in Sake, 27 kilometres from Goma. To date, hundreds of people are moving towards North Kivu’s capital and the region’s largest city. Others seek refuge right across the border in Rwanda.

Mostly from the territory of Masisi, they have left to escape the continued fighting between Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) and General Bosco Ntaganda’s cronies. Clashes began when Congolese soldiers belonging to Ntaganda’s camp defected last month. Shortly before, Congolese President Kabila had expressed intent to hand over Ntaganda to the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

Civilian casualties
Fear, despair and starvation are the daily realities of the displaced.

Shashire, a mother of five from Kimoka, testifies to this. “When the fighting started, we only saved the children and nothing more. We are going to starve to death here, since morning we have not received any food. No assistance from the authorities,” she says. “It is very difficult for us and for the children.”

Migihaba, a 50-year old man from Mushaki, recalls what forced him to move. “We heard several gun shots, and even bombs exploded,” he says. “And then they take young people from us by force to integrate them into the army. It is against this background that we took flight.”

A conflict with unknown origins
The soldiers Migihaba refers to are from the former National Congress for People’s Defense (CNDP) rebellion. Ntaganda served as their chief of staff alongside leader Laurent Nkunda, who was arrested by Rwanda in 2009. That very year, the CNDP was integrated into the Congolese army and Ntaganda was promoted to general.

According to Sake community chief Lawi Katahanwa Mbira, the army’s split compelled people to flee. “We do not know why they fight, because, in principle, they form a single army,” he says. “The problem is that we do not differentiate between CNDP and FARDC, because they all wear the same uniform. The population is simply the victim of a war whose origins are unknown.”

No aid
The battles plague the local population. No offer of aid has been reported. “We have not received any help from the government. We need water and food. We sleep outside, on the ground,” says Shashire.

Even more worrisome, it is rumoured that rebels are advancing. On 1 May, shootings by a drunk military man in a Sake square incited retaliation from soldiers in hills surrounding the city. Residents panicked.

What next?

Military sources of the special commando unit based in Mubambiro, which is two kilometres from Sake, are confident the FARDC will soon get the situation under control because of the CNDP defection from the national army. In a press release, CNDP chairman Edward Bangashusu requested Congolese authorities to negotiate a way to ending hostilities.

Meanwhile, the population fears the situation will worsen. Nobody wants to relive the 2008 war. Sake community chief Mbira says: “Even if we fail to eat, we must stop the war because we do not want to die. We want peace.

– Passy Mubalama, Goma

Congo Clashes Thwart Plans to Export Conflict-Free Minerals

-Bloomberg Business Week

Renewed fighting in Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern Kivu provinces will block plans to start exports of so-called “conflict-free minerals” from the region next month, North Kivu’s provincial mines ministry said.

In March, Congolese Mines Minister Martin Kabwelulu approved sales from 11 tin-ore and coltan mines in the Masisi territory in North Kivu, where Congo’s army is now battling a breakaway faction of soldiers loyal to former rebel General Bosco Ntaganda. Both minerals are used in the manufacture of electronics ranging from mobile phones to jet engines.

“We were hoping to start exporting from green-lighted sites in Masisi, mostly coltan, but unfortunately the trouble we’re seeing is in Masisi,” Emmanuel Ndimubanzi, the head of North Kivu province’s Division of Mines, said in an interview in Goma, the provincial capital, on April 28. “It won’t work.”

For more than a decade, armed groups and some members of the Congolese army, including Ntaganda, have funded their rebellions and enriched themselves through the sale of minerals found throughout the region, according to the United Nations.

As more buyers choose to avoid purchasing minerals that may have supported one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, Congo’s share of world tin sales dropped to 2 percent last year from about 4 percent in 2008, when it was the fifth-largest supplier, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

In North Kivu, home to the country’s biggest tin mines, mineral sales have fallen more than 80 percent in the past three years, according to mines ministry statistics.

Millions Dead

War in eastern Congo began in the mid-1990s when the aftermath of the genocide in neighboring Rwanda spilled over the border. Fighting spread throughout Congo, a country about the size of Western Europe. Congo’s mineral wealth helped fund a series of international and civil wars that left at least 3.1 million dead between 1998 and 2007, according to the International Rescue Committee. Most died from starvation or preventable disease, according to the New York-based aid agency.

A mixture of ethnic, political and economic disputes still plague the Kivu region, which is rich in tin ore, coltan, wolfram and gold. In 2010, the U.S. passed a law designating those four metals “conflict minerals,” spurring an exodus of buyers from Congo worried about reputational risk.

Congo’s Mines Ministry is working with partners including the tin and electronics industries, regional governments and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to create mineral-supply chains that don’t fund conflict.

Projects Derailed

The new fighting will derail those projects in the Kivu provinces, according to John Kanyoni, the president of North Kivu’s association of tin buyers and one of the biggest suppliers of Congolese tin.

“As long as there is conflict there, no one will be purchasing minerals,” Kanyoni said by phone from Kigali, the Rwandan capital, on April 30.

The current fighting began last month, when about 300 soldiers loyal to Ntaganda deserted the army amid speculation he would be arrested. The International Criminal Court has indicted Ntaganda for war crimes. Last week, fighting broke out between the army and fighters linked to Ntaganda on at least three fronts, according to the UN. The political wing of Ntaganda’s former rebel group denied he was involved in the mutiny in an e- mailed statement April 30.

Trade Relocating

Congo’s tin and coltan trade has begun shifting to other provinces with less exposure to armed groups, Kanyoni said. In Katanga province, companies including Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola Solutions Inc. (MSI) (MSI), Finland’s Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) and AVX Corp. (AVX) (AVX) of the U.S. are backing a project to mine tantalum for their electronic devices that is certified conflict free.

In Maniema province, west of North and South Kivu, Malaysia Smelting Corp. (SMELT), the world’s third-biggest tin producer, is in talks with the government to develop an industrial-scale project.

Last year, Katanga produced 4,277 metric tons of tin ore, a 10-fold increase since 2009, when it accounted for only 3 percent of the country’s official tin exports and none of its coltan sales. The production compares with the more than 13,000 tons of tin ore North Kivu produced in 2008.

North Kivu’s mineral trade previously accounted for 90 percent of export earnings and as much as 50 percent of provincial revenue, North Kivu provincial official Ndimubanzi said. That money “has dried up,” he said.

Western companies have stopped buying from the region, according to ministry statistics, and the Chinese businesses that are buying about 85 percent of the province’s remaining tin ore production are paying lower prices, Ndimubanzi said.

More than 2,800 tons of tin ore worth about $37 million and 111 tons of coltan valued at $2.5 million was shipped out of Goma in the first three months of this year, according to provincial statistics.

“We’re hoping the security situation won’t degenerate further,” he said. “The only hope for us is to export these conflict-free minerals.”

Congo’s Security Sector Reform is Vital

Re-printed from Eastern Congo Initiative.

A new report directed by the U.S.-based Eastern Congo Initiative is calling for more political will inside the Democratic Republic of Congo and more help from outside to effectively reform the country’s security sector, after years of failure.  The report is called “Taking a Stand on Security Sector Reform.” 

More than a decade after the official end of Congo’s war, an estimated 1.7 million people remain displaced internally because of ongoing violence, mostly in the east of the country, while about half a million Congolese remain refugees in neighboring countries.

In eastern regions, gender-based violence and rape, the recruitment of child soldiers, militia and rebel activity, illegal mining and cross-border smuggling remain rampant.  The most recent election cycle was marred by violence across the country.

Despite large quantities of highly sought minerals used to make cell phones and laptops, the Democratic Republic of Congo remains 187th out of 187 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index.

A report released this week by the Eastern Congo Initiative and other groups, including Congolese civil society forums, says the main problem is Congo’s security sector, which remains much more of a scourge than a help.

A conference in Washington Monday started with the release of a video by the founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, American actor Ben Affleck.

“Armed groups continue to prey on Congolese families and their communities. Perhaps most troubling, they are not the sole violators of human rights,” said Affleck. “The police, judiciary and most importantly the military are all too often perpetrators rather than protectors.  As a result, people suffer, investors are put off, the unemployed turn to militias to secure a living, and the cycle of violence continues.”

The first speaker was Cindy McCain, wife of U.S. Senator John McCain. She has made several recent trips to Congo and joined forces with Affleck in terms of Congolese advocacy.  She also underlined the urgency of security sector reform.

“An effective security sector, organized, resourced and trained, is essential to solving problems from displacement, recruitment of child soldiers, and gender-based violence,” she said.

The report calls on Congolese civil society to take charge of the issue, while demanding Congo’s government carry out repeated promises of security sector reform with clear benchmarks.  It calls for a more unified structure and command of Congo’s military, with more recruitment of women and underrepresented social groups, while ending the integration of militias.

The report says too little money, both channeled by Congo’s government and coming from outside, is directed toward these types of reforms.  It says donors, who contribute about half of Congo’s budget, have had poor coordination on the matter.

One of those acknowledging the many challenges, despite continued attention to the problem, is U.S. State Department official Karl Wycoff.

“We recognize that the DRC has struggled to make meaningful progress in the implementation of security sector reforms and has had little success holding security forces accountable for their human rights violations,” said Wycoff.

He also says the Congolese government has failed in its many attempts to integrate former rebel fighters into the army.

Several Congolese audience members were angry the report focuses too much on eastern Congo and not on the entire country.  They also say the real problem is a lack of democracy and failed elections, which have twice returned President Joseph Kabila to power, since he took over after the 2001 assassination of his father, former coup leader Laurent Desire Kabila.

Albert Moleka is a spokesman for Etienne Tshisekedi, the current president’s main political rival.  Moleka says he believes if the Democratic Republic of Congo had properly elected leadership, the country would not need outside help to reform its military.  Moleka says he was not impressed by current security reform efforts, which already include the United States, other governments and the United Nations.

A Congolese embassy spokesman, Yves Bashonga, denied there is a lack of political will with the current government in Kinshasa, but rather problems in how fast the reform is going and whether the right strategies are being employed.

Africa’s Richest Man Gives Aid to Congo

Africa’s richest man, Nigerian Aliko Dangote, has donated $500 000 to victims of last month’s munitions blasts in Congo which killed at least 282 people, his group said on Tuesday.

Dangote made the donation at the weekend in the Congolese capital Brazzaville with a pledge to increase his charity works as well as create more jobs for Africans this year.

“About this philanthropy, I think from this year, I personally want to take it very seriously. I want to be much more aggressive than what we have had in the past,” he said in a statement.

Speaking at the occasion, Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso said that his gvernment has started reconstruction of houses affected in the blasts, adding that “this contribution will go a long way in building new houses for the victims,” the statement said.

Dangote, rated by Forbes as Africa’s richest man with vast interests in oil and gas, banking, flour, sugar and food production in Nigeria, also operates in about a dozen other African countries.

The powerful March 4 blasts in Brazzaville, blamed on a short-circuit and fire, killed at least 282 people, injured 2 300 more and destroyed hundreds of homes around the munitions depot, leaving 14 000 people homeless.

UN Authorities Discover at Least 33 Deaths After Congo Elections

Security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo carried out killings and arbitrary arrests after elections last year, according to a UN report.  The UN Joint Human Rights Office documented the killing of 33 civilians in Kinshasa by members of the army, police and the elite Republican Guard. The country’s justice minister has rejected the report’s findings.

International observers say last November’s disputed elections, won by President Joseph Kabila, were flawed. The report focuses on the period between 26 November and 26 December 2011 in Kinshasa – seen as an opposition stronghold. It says that during this month, at least 33 people were killed – including 22 by gunshot – and at least 83 others were injured, including 61 who were shot. At least 16 people remain unaccounted for, it said.

‘Dumped in river’

It said it had documented the arrest of at least 265 civilians, most of whom had been detained illegally or arbitrarily. Many of these, the report alleges, were detained due to their affiliation with the UDPS opposition party or because they came from the home province of its leader, Etienne Tshisekedi. It blames the bulk of these acts of violence on the Congolese Republican Guard and officers of the National Congolese Police and its specialised units. Witnesses are quoted as saying some of the bodies were dumped in the Congo river, while others were buried in mass graves.

The report calls on the Congolese authorities to conduct independent investigations into all the cases of human rights violations committed in the capital to bring those guilty to justice.  It also recommends that illegal detention facilities in the capital should be immediately shut down.  The November elections were the first Congolese-organised polls since the end of a devastating war in 2003, which left some four million people dead.

Congolese Fight Back Causing Warlord To Surrender

A senior commander of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) militia, Lt. Col. Idrissa Muradadi, has surrendered in the face of a military offensive by the Congolese army and UN forces.

FDRL is an outfit operating mainly in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and it’s composed of elements responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Speaking to The New Times, Jean Sayinzoga, the Chairman of the Rwanda Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission (RDRC), confirmed the development.

“He is still in Congo, I am yet to get more details,” said Sayinzoga.

DRC Army Commander, Col. Sylvain Ekenge, also confirmed Muradadi’s surrender saying that he turned himself in with three of his bodyguards on March 10.

Ekenge said the captive is now in the hands of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO) prior to his repatriation to Rwanda. He said Muradadi surrendered because of military pressure.

The Congolese army, backed by MONUSCO, launched an offensive on February 15 to hunt down FDLR fighters after a series of attacks by the rebel group.

“More than two dozen civilians have been killed by FDLR since New Year’s. The latest attack by the FDLR in South Kivu on Feb. 25 killed 4 civilians and left three others injured,” Ekenge told agencies.

“We will continue this offensive until all of the rebels go home”.

In the same region, 15 other rebels and 74 of their dependents also turned themselves over to the military, Ekenge said.

$70 Million in Congo Mining Revenue Untraceable

Anti-corruption investigators in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they cannot trace more than $70 million that mining companies claim to have paid to the government.

Professor Jeremy Dumba is the Congo coordinator of a global anti-corruption watchdog, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, or EITI.  His team has collected figures on what mining companies say they paid the DRC government, and what the government says it received from those companies.  On Thursday, he announced that he could not make the two sets of figures match.

Dumba said there are a lot of gaps in the figures, and he and his team had not been able to reconcile the payments declared by companies with the state’s receipts.  He said it was very difficult to get figures from the state revenue service that matched what the companies had declared.

Dumba submitted the figures as part of a long-overdue EITI report on Congo.  He said the latest figures collected for the years 2008 and 2009, show mining companies say they paid tax revenues far higher than what the government says it received from them.  In 2008 for example, they declared payments of $121 million, while the government said it received $69 million.  In 2009 the gap was smaller — $99 million paid, say the companies; $73 million received, says the government.

EITI 

The EITI was launched by the British government in 2002 and is supported by the United States and other Western countries. It brings together governments, companies and civil society to try to ensure that taxes from mining, oil and gas are properly accounted for and go to national treasuries. The initiative aims to improve governance in countries that depend on those industries so that the revenues are used to reduce poverty.

The amount of tax that companies say they pay should equal what governments say they receive.  For most other countries applying for EITI membership the amounts are more or less equal.  But figures for Tanzania and Mali also show gaps of tens of millions between payments and receipts.

Congo has applied for membership of the scheme, and President Joseph Kabila has said that his government is committed to it.  But before becoming a full member, the country’s reports on company payments and tax receipts have to be approved by the EITI board.

Unreliable data 

Dumba said the figures for the DRC’s oil industry add up, but the data has has been able to collect on the mining sector is not reliable. 

Another Congolese anti-corruption expert, Jean-Claude Katende, said it was difficult for Congo to provide accurate figures because its mining industry is more complex than the industry in other countries.

“You have countries that have three or four or 10 mining enterprises whereas in the DRC you have more than 200 mining enterprises,” Katende noted.  “And to that you should add the petroleum industry and the comptoirs.”

Comptoirs are licensed exporters of minerals.

Data

Another problem, Katende said, is that Congo does not have a centralized databank for its mining sector.  But, he said, the government is working with donors on a plan to computerize mining data, which will then be held centrally.

The gap between what mining companies pay and what Congo’s government should receive may be far greater than the tens of millions unaccounted for in Dumba’s report.

Mining companies may be hiding some of their income and thus paying less tax than they should. Dumba said he knew of cases where this may have been happening.

He said for example there’s the case of a company that exported 400,000 tons of minerals.  They should have paid 2 percent tax on that, but their tax declaration came to much less, indicating that they hadn’t declared all their income. 

It has also been claimed that in the past few years the government has sold large mining concessions at far less than their market price. British member of parliament Eric Joyce, chairman of the UK Parliament Great Lakes of Africa group, has alleged that in the past four years Congo has lost more than $5.5 billion through the sale by the government of mineral assets at less than their fair market value. He said the sales had been made through offshore companies which had captured the profits.

Transparency 

When asked about Joyce’s allegation last year, President Kabila said he was not going to respond to a British MP. He said his commitment to good governance was meant to benefit the Congolese people, not to please foreign politicians.

As evidence of open dealings, Kabila said that his government’s $9 billion mining deal with a Chinese consortium, its biggest deal in the mining sector, was only signed after it was debated and approved by the parliament. 

 

Originally covered by Voice of America.