Alan Dershowitz defends Dan Gertler, the Israeli criminal billionaire who has looted DR Congo

[enhanced_deficit]

AD , a respected left-winger and probably be a neocon, is not officially part of GOP-Adelson wing (that is advertized as a right wing/MAGA outfit) but is often their advocate in media:

Alan Dershowitz defends Dan Gertler, the Israeli criminal billionaire who has looted the DR Congo

US Politics James North on December 11, 2018 23 Comments


Alan Dershowitz (Photo: Sun Sentinel)




Dan Gertler, the criminal Israeli billionaire who is responsible for untold misery in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the poorest nations on earth, has an influential new supporter: Alan Dershowitz. In a front page report in today’s New York Times, Dershowitz speaks up for Gertler, who was sanctioned last year by the U.S. government, as “a very good person.”
In fact, Dan Gertler is too corrupt for even the Trump administration to accept. Here’s what the Treasury Department said a year ago about why the U.S. was punishing him under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act:

Gertler is an international businessman and billionaire who has amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Gertler has used his close friendship with DRC President Joseph Kabila 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 state. As a result, between 2010 and 2012 alone, the DRC reportedly lost over $1.36 billion in revenues from the underpricing of mining assets . . .

The U.S. Treasury Department’s language is accurate but too clinical. What it means more vividly is that Gertler and Kabila have stolen hundreds of millions that the DR Congo could have used to create a professional army to replace the current bands of unpaid, uniformed looters who kill and rape civilians with impunity; to invest in education and health; and to reduce the 70 percent rate of malnourishment. Nearly 6 million of the nation’s 81 million people have been displaced by repression and fighting, and the DR Congo is still the greatest ongoing humanitarian disaster since the end of World War 2.

https://mondoweiss.net/2018/12/dersh...l-billionaire/

[Firestarter]

In my humble opinion the billionaire Dan Gertler is even more interesting than Epstein's buddy Dershowitz...


The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank declared Congo bankrupt in 1994 and forced it into “liberalisation” in the early 2000s.
Congo’s economic crisis forced the government to sign the Millennium Initiative,
Liberalisation has removed control of economic resources from Congo, which through offshore companies made it possible for the elite to loot Congo of its valuable resources, while bribing politicians and funding violence to keep the population under control. Liberalisation has extended Kabila’s tenure and as such was anti-democratic. Kabila provided a favourable environment for foreign investments (and made a bundle in the process).
Mineral sales contributed heavily to the (second) presidential campaign in 2011 that cost over $1 billion. Most of the funding came from Congo, with 40% coming from international donors. The elections were decried by international observers and Joseph Kabila won from Etienne Tshisekedi.
The third presidential election cost an estimated $1.4 billion. In May 2014 US Secretary of State John Kerry (of Skull & Bones), promised $30 million for the campaign on the condition that Kabila did not run for a third time.

While the international community has spoken on the tremendous corruption in the Congo, it has “forgotten” to address the secrecy of international trade, without which this wouldn’t be possible on such a large scale.
Global Witness’s “Out of Africa” report estimates that Congo suffered $1.36 billion in lost revenue during the last election cycle, which were routed out of Congo through British tax havens, with several companies involved listed on the London Stock Exchange.
British Member of Parliament Eric Joyce published a list of 59 shell companies operating in Congo in 2011; 47 of them were registered in the British Virgin Islands. The Panama Papers confirm that offshore companies have been widely used in Congo. The most reported profession in the Panama Papers is “politician”…

Kabila and his aide Augustine Katumba Mwanke (now deceased) were increasingly associated with Israeli businessman Dan Gertler, who is named in more than 200 files in the Panama Papers.
Gertler bought Congolese mining assets and sold them at profits of thousands percentage points to companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.
In 2005, Gertler formed Global Enterprises Corporate (GEC), owned through a company registered in the Isle of Man, the chief assets of which were 75% of 2 huge copper mining projects in the province of Katanga (with 25% for Congo’s defunct state company Gécamines). Gertler’s investment of £3 million was valued at more than £1 billion.
In 2010, Kabila signed a presidential decree granting oil concessions in Lake Albert to Caprikat and Foxwhelp, both associated with Gertler and registered in the British Virgin Islands by Mossack Fonseca.
Since his arrival in Congo in 1997, Gertler has built an estimated $2.5 billion empire.

In October 2016, the US Justice Department and SEC fined the hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management Company under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on bribery charges. The company’s front man in Congo, Dan Gertler, alongside Kabila and his aide Katumba Mwanke received over $100 million in bribes.
Barnabe Kikaya Bin Karubi responded:

For us an attack on [Gertler] is an attack on the Congo … Mr. Gertler’s businesses are legitimate. He pays his taxes, making a good contribution to our government in monetary terms.

Och-Ziff has pleaded guilty and agreed to a $412 million fine: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...7.2018.1447373
(http://archive.is/AGzv5)


For more on how the Rwandan genocide was orchestrated to take over the Congo (Zaire): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...ain-and-the-UN

[Firestarter]

Dan Gertler is another Chabad Lubavitcher very close to the gigantic network of scandals surrounding Donald Trump.


There are good stories on Gertler stealing riches from Congo, from more than 10 years ago…
I’ll start with this story from February 2008 that details Gertler’s connection to the Chabad-Lubavitch cult of which Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner are members…

Dan Gertler does nothing without the spiritual guidance of Brooklyn-born Rabbi Chaim Leibovitch, a friend of Condoleeza Rice.
When Dan Gertler is in the Congo, his kosher meals come from its capital Kinshasa, arranged by high priest of the Chabad of Central Africa Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila. Bentolila has been a Kinshasa Rabbi since 1991, working with the previous vicious dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko.
In one of those strange coincidences, Israeli trained shock troops became Mobutu’s bodyguards, with Mossad advisers.

In 2000, former Congolese president Laurent Kabila (father of Joseph) offered Gertler’s International Diamond Industries (IDI) a monopoly on Congolese diamonds, and 88% of the proceeds, worth billions in exchange for Israeli military assistance.
In 2000, Congolese military officials flew to Israel to negotiate the deal.
Africa Confidential called President Kabila’s 2003 visit to the Bush White House a “coup” for Israeli diamond magnates Dan Gertler and Beny Steinmetz.

Dan Gertler is also close to Israeli politicians, especially Avigdor Lieberman, and even closer to the Israeli-American diamante merchant Beny Steinmetz, a good friend of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Gertler’s Rabbi Leibovitz, is also very close to Lieberman and “a regular fixture” in PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s offices
Steinmetz’s real estate partners include the billionaires David and Simon Reuben, and the Saudi Arabian investment company Olayan Group, which is deeply connected with defense insider Bechtel Corporation (whose chairman Riley Bechtel was on the board of Theranos in which Rupert Murdoch and Betsy DeVos invested hundreds of millions of dollars).

Canadian-based Energem (formerly DiamondWorks), whose director/shareholders include Tony and Mario Teixeira, is involved in the trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline, together with subsidiary of Bechtel, Nexant.
Energem was launched by Tim Hoare and is owned by British mercenary Tony Buckingham, the Teixeiras, J.P. Morgan, Gertler’s partner Beny Steinmetz (50%).
Brian Menell is on the board of Energem. Brian Menell is also on the board of Anglovaal with Nir Livnat, who has also supported both Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba in Congo’s bloody wars. Livnat was managing director of the Johannesburg-based subsidiary of the Steinmetz Group of Diamond Companies, Ascot Diamonds.

The Portuguese born Anthony Teixeira later moved to South Africa and his daughter married Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba.
Bemba’s deadly battle in Congo in March 2007 was a fight between rival agents — Bemba and president Joseph Kabila — to be the black frontman for the mining cartels run by dynastic families like Templesman, Oppenheimer, Mendell, Forrest, Blattner, Hertzov, Gertler and Steinmetz.

Security for mining operations in Congo is provided exclusively by private security companies like Overseas Security Services (OSS), owned by Belgian billionaire tycoon Philippe de Moerloose.
De Moerloose is also an adviser to European Union (EU) Commissioner, diamante salesman Louis Michel.

In November 2007, Dan Gertler finalized a deal in which the Canadian Katanga Mining Ltd. bought rival NIKANOR for $2.1 billion so their merged company would become the world’s largest cobalt company by combining their Congo mining projects, reportedly worth $3.3 billion.
NIKANOR is registered in offshore taxhaven Isle of Man/ Britain’s Earl of Balfour is a director of both NIKANOR and Bateman.

Former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel, assistant under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and policy advisor to Barack Obama, Dan Kurtzer, is on NIKANOR’s board. NIKANOR partners include Israeli-born Nir Livnat.
The Nikanor company was owned by Benny Steinmetz (50%), Dan Gertler (20%) and the Anglo-Jewish Gertner family (Mende and Moshe Gertner, 30%): https://dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/g...ng-torah-gang/
(https://web.archive.org/web/20190720061854/https://dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/gertlers-bling-bang-torah-gang/)


In 2009, diamond tycoon Dan Gertler at Ben-Gurion International Airport was asked by officers from the National Fraud Investigations Unit to accompany them on suspicions of bribing his friend, Avigdor Lieberman (later Israel's foreign minister).
Gertler simply denied that he had ever transferred money to or been involved in business with Lieberman.

Katanga’s cash-flow problems forced it to transfer control to the Swiss-based commodities giant Glencore (maybe best known for Marc Rich).

In 2003, the Gertler-controlled Emaxon Finance Corporation was granted a four-year concession by Miba to market 85% of its diamonds, which Gertler purchased at a 5% discount and on top of that lent $15 million to Miba.
The signatories on this agreement on behalf of Emaxon were Gertler's Rabbi Chaim Leibovitch and attorney Yaakov Neeman, Israel's minister of justice.

Gertler became Joseph Kabila's official personal envoy, and with Rabbi Leibovitch forged close ties between the Congo and senior officials in Washington. He personally met with then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to discuss this matter.
According to a confidant: "You can attribute to him, for example, Congo's abstention in the UN vote on the U.S. invasion of Iraq”: https://www.haaretz.com/1.5072635
(http://web.archive.org/web/20180627024150/https://www.haaretz.com/1.5072635)

[oyarde]

AD , a respected left-winger and probably be a neocon, is not officially part of GOP-Adelson wing (that is advertized as a right wing/MAGA outfit) but is often their advocate in media:

Alan Dershowitz defends Dan Gertler, the Israeli criminal billionaire who has looted the DR Congo

US Politics James North on December 11, 2018 23 Comments


Alan Dershowitz (Photo: Sun Sentinel)




Dan Gertler, the criminal Israeli billionaire who is responsible for untold misery in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the poorest nations on earth, has an influential new supporter: Alan Dershowitz. In a front page report in today’s New York Times, Dershowitz speaks up for Gertler, who was sanctioned last year by the U.S. government, as “a very good person.”
In fact, Dan Gertler is too corrupt for even the Trump administration to accept. Here’s what the Treasury Department said a year ago about why the U.S. was punishing him under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act:

Gertler is an international businessman and billionaire who has amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Gertler has used his close friendship with DRC President Joseph Kabila 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 state. As a result, between 2010 and 2012 alone, the DRC reportedly lost over $1.36 billion in revenues from the underpricing of mining assets . . .

The U.S. Treasury Department’s language is accurate but too clinical. What it means more vividly is that Gertler and Kabila have stolen hundreds of millions that the DR Congo could have used to create a professional army to replace the current bands of unpaid, uniformed looters who kill and rape civilians with impunity; to invest in education and health; and to reduce the 70 percent rate of malnourishment. Nearly 6 million of the nation’s 81 million people have been displaced by repression and fighting, and the DR Congo is still the greatest ongoing humanitarian disaster since the end of World War 2.

https://mondoweiss.net/2018/12/dersh...l-billionaire/

guy could be a dirtbag but the opening paragraph is just describing free commerce to me.

[Firestarter]

Please don’t tell a sole that once again the trail of corruption, money laundering, bribes and Russia from Dan Gertler leads to Glencore and Trump’s Secretary of Commerce – long-time Rothschild banker Wilbur Ross.


In 1997, chief rabbi of Kinshasa’s Chabad-Lubavitch centre Shlomo Bentolila introduced diamond merchant Dan Gertler to Kabila’s son Joseph.

In April 2002, Gertler secretly shuttled between Washington, Kinshasa and Kigali, Rwanda, relaying letters between Kabila and Condoleezza Rice.
Former special assistant to President George W. Bush Jendayi Frazer said Gertler’s intervention was instrumental to the “peace” accord.

In June 2010 and March 2011, state-owned Sodimico sold more than 30 mining licenses to Gertler-linked companies for $60 million; worth an estimated $1.6 billion…
In 2011, companies affiliated with Gertler bought shares in 5 mining ventures from 3 state-owned firms. The state companies “forgot” to publicly announce the sales.

At the Mutanda project, Gertler paid far less for his 20% than his partner, Glencore International. One of Gertler’s British Virgin Islands-based companies bought the 20% stake from Gecamines for $120 million in March 2011, worth about $849 million.
In May 2012, Glencore paid $340 million plus $140 million in assumed debt, for 20% of the same mine, increasing its stake to 60%: http://web.archive.org/web/20180922065124/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dan-gertler-earns-billions-as-mine-deals-fail-to-enrich-congo/2012/12/27/c37d0100-4e31-11e2-8b49-64675006147f_story.html?utm_term=.80aca62740bf


Gertler’s had allegedly delivered weapons to President Kabila in 2001 in exchange for a monopoly on the sale of Congo diamonds.

In 2007, Glencore first went into business with Gertler.
In 2009, Glencore partnered with Dan Gertler for mining permits awarded by the Congolese government to extract copper and cobalt on very favourable terms.

In July 2018, the US Department of Justice demanded that Glencore publish documents on its activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Venezuela. Washington is “investigating” corruption and money laundering.
The British “anti-corruption” Serious Fraud Office also announced to “examine” Glencore: https://www.publiceye.ch/en/topics/c...lencore-in-drc


The reported largest shareholder in Glencore Xstrata is the state-owned Qatar Investment Authority with 8.2%.

Glencore is in business with the Rusal of Oleg Deripaska, Nat Rothschild, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/vie...&t=1038&p=4931


Long-time business partners Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik serve on the board of the Chabad-Lubavitch Schneerson library.

In 2014, Jeffrey Epstein invested $1.5 million in SUM with Barak. In 2015, that money went into Carbyne.
In September 2017, Russian oligarchs Viktor Vekselberg and Andrew Intrater bought 24% of Carbyne’s Class A-1 shares through Intrater’s Columbus Nova Technology Partners (CNTP): https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/vie...5&p=6125#p6125


In 2014, Wilbur Ross led the €1 billion takeover of the Bank of Cyprus. The second-largest shareholder of Bank of Cyprus at this time was the billionaire Russian industrialist Viktor Vekselberg, head of Renova Corp.
In November 2014, former CEO of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackerman, became chairman of the Bank of Cyprus. Ackerman is also on the board of Renova.
Vekselberg once sold his aluminium company to Oleg Deripaska, who turned it into Rusal: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/vie...8&p=4908#p4908


In 2011, Wilbur Ross’ private equity company, WL Ross, led a coalition of investors that put about $1 billion into Diamond S Shipping.
Diamond S Shipping’s business mostly relies on a handful of customers, including Glencore PLC, which provided more than 10% of its revenue in 2012- 2013: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/vie...8&p=5984#p5984

[Firestarter]

In 2013, a panel led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote that Gertler acquired mining interests in the Congo for an average of one-sixth of their market price.

Dan Gertler was especially close to Joseph Kabila’s aide Augustin Katumba Mwanke, who won’t be talking as he died in a plane crash in 2012.
On one occasion, Gertler, Katumba and their families vacationed together on a yacht on the Red Sea. Katumba then check into an Israeli hospital for a scheduled operation. When the operation went awry, Katumba slipped into a coma, and Gertler rushed in 13 doctors, including 3 from London.
Katumba has praised Gertler for saving his life; see Gertler visiting him in hospital.


Mining tycoon Dan Gertler appears in 120 documents of the Paradise Papers, regarding his relationship with London-listed Glencore, which uses Appleby’s Bermuda branch.
These documents showed that in 2009 Glencore “loaned” $45 million for 2 years to Gertler for helping to make a deal with Congo officials over a joint venture with state-owned Gécamines at the Katanga copper mine in 2009. The loan document stated that Congo had to agree on the Katanga deal.
Katanga “persuaded” Congo into a signing bonus worth $140 million, instead of more than $580 million. The reduced bonus meant that Katanga paid one quarter of the market price for copper at the time.

In February 2009, Katanga announced a sizable loan from a group that included Glencore and Lora Enterprises, a British Virgin Islands company owned by a trust that benefits Gertler’s family.
In 2014, it emerged that Glencore first lent the capital that Gertler’s company in turn lent to Katanga, which then acquired new shares in Katanga.

In February 2017, Glencore bought Gertler’s stake in major Congo mines, including Katanga, for more than $500 million.
One of the reports alleged that Gertler agreed to exchange diamonds for weapons to Congolese armed forces, at a time when national armies, militias and warlords were killing and raping indiscriminately.

In September 2016, the US Justice Department settled a bribery case with New York-based hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management Group under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for $413 million. This mentioned Lora Enterprises, which was described as controlled by an unnamed Israeli “DRC partner” (which must have been Gertler).
The Justice Department accused Och-Ziff for lending Lora Enterprises $110 million in November 2010 that was used, to make “approximately $20 million in corrupt payments to be made to various DRC officials”, including unnamed “DRC official 2” believed to be Augustin Katumba Mwanke: https://www.icij.org/investigations/...s-of-glencore/
(http://web.archive.org/web/20191001004355/https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/room-of-secrets-reveals-mysteries-of-glencore/)


I first looked into the Chabad, when I investigated the Bayrock scandal in which Trump was a business partner of Tevfik Arif.
I found out that Lubavitcher Dan Gertler is also in business with the ENRC of the Chabad-linked Kazakh trio that were/are business partners of Tevfik Arif…


In 2012, Dan Gertler’s Canada-based Emaxon Finance International Inc., paid $15 million in cash and loans to the country’s state-owned diamond miner MIBA, for a four-year contract to sell 88% of its diamonds (a near monopoly of Congo’s diamond trade).

In 2007, Dan Gertler became a shareholder in CAMEC, a company listed on London’s AIM exchange.
When.
in 2009, the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation PLC (ENRC), the Kazakh-founded mining company controlled by the partners in crime of Trump’s business partner Tevfik Arif – the Kazakh trio - Alexander Mashkevitch, Alijan Ibragimov, and Patokh Chodiev, acquired CAMEC.
ENRC bought CAMEC through purchase agreements with a number of offshore companies which were listed as CAMEC’s shareholders. Some of these offshore companies appear linked to Gertler.

See Alexander Mashkevitch on the left with a Torah scroll that was donated to the Chabad Russian Centre of South Florida in 2011.


In 2009, SMKK (Societe Miniere de Kabolela & Kipese SPRL) was half-owned by the state’s Gecamines (La Generale des Carrieres & des Mines), and half-owned by ENRC. ENRC wanted to acquire all of SMKK but didn’t exercise its right. Instead, ENRC made a deal with the Gertler-controlled Emerald Star Enterprises Ltd., based in the British Virgin Islands.
On 21 December, 2009, ENRC paid Emerald Star $25 million for an option to buy the remaining 50% of SMKK.
In February 2010, Gertler’s Emerald Star made a deal to buy Gecamines’ stake in SMKK for $15 million. Four months later, ENRC completed the transaction by buying Gertler’s Emerald Star for another $50 million (paying a total of $75 million), or 5 times what Gertler had paid.

Gertler also has a copper and cobalt joint venture with ENRC - Comide SPRL.
ENRC is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

In 2009 and 2010, Congo’s government suddenly cancelled the Kolwezi, Frontier and Lonshi projects with First Quantum. When in January 2010, Gecamines cancelled its contract with First Quantum it secretly awarded its stake in the Kolwezi project to the Highwind Group, another one of Dan Gertler’s networks of offshore companies.
In August 2010 Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation PLC (ENRC) announced to buy indirect control of the Kolwezi licence from Dan Gertler. This was the day after the ICC Court of Arbitration had ruled against the Canadian miner First Quantum, which had protested about the state of Congo revoking its Kolwezi mining licence.

ENRC loaned the Highwind Group the money to cover the $60 million signature bonus and also paid $175 million to control 50.5% of the stake. This suggests that Highwind promised financing even before Gecamines sold on its stake in Kolwezi.

In May 2010, the Frontier and Lonshi copper mines were confiscated from First Quantum and then secretly awarded to 3 offshore companies, of which 2 are linked to Dan Gertler.
That ENRC bought these mines anyway, it looks like ENRC expects to buy the licenses from these offshore companies.

In January 2012, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. and Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. (ENRC) agreed on a $1.25-billion settlement over First Quantum’s misadventures in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This was only weeks after Kabila was re-elected as president of the Congo.
Analyst at UBS Securities Matt Murphy concluded that as First Quantum spent about $1.3-billion to acquire and build Kolwezi and Frontier, it effectively got its money back.

Global Witness called on Glencore ENRC to publish details of the transactions as it looks like corrupt Congolese officials received kickbacks through these offshore companies, in return for selling assets to Gertler below the market price: https://cdn.globalwitness.org/archiv...012.6.12_1.pdf
(http://archive.is/umZ3Y)


Tevfik Arif, although no Jew is also very close to the Chabad, was the business partner of Donald Trump in Bayrock.
In September 2010, Arif was arrested by the Turkish police for running a prostitution ring, on board a luxury yacht, with the Kazakh-based billionaire and Belgian citizen Alexander Mashkevitch, the president of metal and mining Eurasian National Resources Corporation (ENRC) and a member of the World Jewish Congress, with his ENRC colleagues, Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov.

The Sapir Organization, owned by Georgian property developer Sapir Tamir, partnered with Bayrock. Sapir, the Kazakh trio, Musa Bazhaev, and the Reuben brothers (real estate partners of Gertler’s business partner Beny Steinmetz,) were guests at the weddings of Tevfik’s children.
Patokh Chodiev has said that the “Kazakh trio” first met the London based billionaires, David and Simon Reuben, in the spring of 1992: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post6532237

Musa Bazhaev, head of Alliance Group in Russia, was also on the Savarona boat with the prostitutes, and is close to both Alexander Mashkevitch and Vladimir Putin.
See from left to right: Bazhaev, Alexander Mashkevitch, and Tevfik Arif.


See Musa Bazhaev with Putin.



Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, occupied a management position at Mittal. Johannes Sittard was Mittal's second in command in 1995-2001.
The ENRC and Alferon are both chaired by Johannes Sittard. Lakshmi Mittal paid $100 million to Alferon to acquire Karmet steelworks in Kazakhstan for $310 million in 1995. Alferon is owned by the Kazakh trio, Alexander Mashkevitch, Alijan Ibragimov, and Patokh Chodiev.

Sittard said that he used the Chodiev group to pay a huge commission (bribe) to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev (Alexander Mashkevitch’s friend, whose son-in-law, Zia, was Bazhaev’s brother): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post6580309

[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://www.mineweb.com/archive/nikanors-drc-mining-contract-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/Int...llionaire.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/20181008195536/https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/zakenman-dan-gertler-verdiende-miljarden-aan-de-uitbuiting-van-congo~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/pe...bel-lecture-2/