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Article

16 Nov 2018

Author:
Franz Wild, Vernon Silver and William Clowes, Bloomberg Businessweek

Trouble in the Congo: The Misadventures of Glencore - What a time to own the world’s most valuable cobalt mine, and to have to fight to keep it.

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...Glencore announced that the U.S. Department of Justice had subpoenaed documents and other records related to its Congolese investments and other deals, and was examining its compliance with U.S. laws on foreign corruption and money laundering. The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office is also considering whether to open an investigation...These actions do not necessarily mean that the company committed any wrongdoing or that charges will be filed. Glencore and Glasenberg declined to comment for this article...At the center of it all: a two-decade swath of corruption allegedly cut across Congo by Gertler. Public and confidential records...show the business relationship between Gertler and Glasenberg is deeper than was previously known...Glasenberg personally managed Glencore’s relationship with Gertler...The money flowed from Glencore to Gertler’s companies for more than a decade in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars of loans and contracts for various services...the relationship between Glencore and Gertler deepened. The company rolled over loans to him at the last minute, never requiring him to pay the principal. It gave him stock options at a discounted price...Glencore even played a role in a complicated arrangement whereby Gertler became the owner of a valuable stream of mining royalty payments Glencore paid to Gecamines, a Congolese state-owned company. Gecamines yielded the royalties to Gertler after defaulting on a loan. Glencore then made a generous upfront royalty payment to Gertler...In October of that yea...reached a settlement with U.S. prosecutors in which it admitted to conspiring to bribe Congolese officials...