This failure to act could at best be described as a sin of omission-though it is a sin compounded by her many promises as a senator to bring real change to the DRC. But Hillary was apparently willing to intervene directly when other well-connected mining companies saw their interests threatened, including foreign mining companies she had no real reason to support.
In 2009 a DRC government commission claimed that a Canadian company called First Quantum Minerals Ltd. had won a lucrative concession for a Lonshi mine (worth $1 billion Canadian) through questionable methods. According to the commission, First Quantum won the Lonshi concession without any competitive bidding.
The company had allegedly offered "cash payments and shares" to some government officials to get it. DRC officials wanted to cancel the contract and suspend the company's license. But according to Le Monde Diplomatique, a French publication, Hillary intervened and tried to pressure the government to restore the company's license.
In January 2012 First Quantum received $1.25 billion for its Congolese assets. Why did the US State Department seek to intervene for a Canadian company doing business in the DRC, especially when 90 percent of the mine's yield ended up in China?
We do not know.
But it is certainly worth noting that First Quantum was founded by Canadian businessman Jean-Raymond Boulle, a longtime Clinton friend and benefactor. It was Boulle who had put together the diamond deal in Arkansas back in the 1980s when Bill was governor.
Hillary wore one of his diamonds to the Clinton inaugural ball. But Boulle was not the only Clinton donor or ally who was seeking to exploit the DRC's vast mineral wealth.
Former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo has worked with the Clinton Global Initiative as a partner and was appointed by Hillary to the State Department's Young African Leaders Initiative in 2010. In October 2011 he was a member of an official State Department delegation to Sudan.
Kase Lawal
The following month he joined forces with a Hillary presidential campaign bundler named Kase Lawal on a $10 million venture to transport 4.5 tons of gold out of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to a UN report, the deal involved some of the most notorious war criminals on the planet, including "individuals operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and committing serious violations of international law involving the targeting of children or women."
Lawal, a Nigerian and devout Muslim who lived in Houston, was the head of CAMAC, an energy company that did considerable business in Nigeria. He also had a long history with the Clintons. In the 1990s, Bill had appointed Lawal to his Trade Advisory Committee on Africa.
When Bill visited Africa in 1998 as president, Lawal accompanied him. Lawal's CAMAC featured on its board former Clinton energy secretary Hazel O'Leary and former Clinton senior White House official Dr. Lee Patrick Brown.
The link is here.
According to a 2012 report in the Atlantic Monthly, Lawal leased a Gulfstream V jet from Dallas-based Southlake Aviation and sent his half brother Mickey Lawal (vice president of CAMAC), along with Reagan Mutombo (Dikembe's nephew) and employees from his company, to Africa to secure the prize. Also involved was a Texas-based diamond trader named Carlos St. Mary.
If all went well, the expected profit was a quick $20 million. All did not go well. The Gulfstream ended up in Goma, Congo. The man they were dealing with to secure the gold was a notorious warlord named Bosco Ntaganda.
Bosco Ntaganda
There are plenty of nefarious criminal leaders in Africa, but Ntaganda belongs near the top of the list. The International Criminal Court indicted him in 2006 for using child soldiers.
Bosco Ntaganda
He was also categorized as a sanctioned individual on the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control list. The consequences: US citizens doing business with him faced the possibility of up to twenty years in prison.
The link is here.
As text messages obtained by UN investigators make clear, Kase Lawal knew he was dealing with the notorious Ntaganda. And from the beginning he knew that the gold was from the DRC. To combat the export of gold by warlords and criminal bans, the DRC government banned unregulated exports of gold out of the country.
Lawal denied any involvement in illegal activities. The "delegation" from Lawal and Mutombo transferred $5 million of the cash and awaited their gold. But then DRC customs officials seized the Gulfstream and arrested everyone onboard.
The owner of the leased jet, David Disiere, got a call in the dead of night informing him that the $43 million jet was loaded with ten boxes of gold but was now being held by authorities in Goma. Detained by Congo authorities for the violation of several laws, Lawal and Mutombo contacted the State Department to get them released.
As the Texas diamond trader St. Mary described it later in a legal deposition, "He [Mutombo] said that ... he had lobbied a lot on our behalf with Washington, D.C. and he indicated that that Kase was quite impressed with his ability-his ability to lobby at the U.S. State Department on our behalf and was surprised at the number of people that he knew because he was the former ambassador to the Congo under Clinton's administration."
They were released from jail following State Department intervention. No one involved has faced criminal charges in the United States.