DRC: government unveils agreement with businessman Dan Gertler
Video press conference by businessman, Dan Gertler, in Kinshasa, DRC, November 16, 2020 (Illustrative image).
© Sonia Rolley / RFI
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
After pressure from civil society and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Congolese government made public, Thursday, December 1 in Kinshasa, the memorandum of understanding signed in February with the Ventora company of Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler.
The Minister of Finance, Nicolas Kazadi officially handed over a copy of this agreement to the representatives of civil society.
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With our correspondent in Kinshasa,
Pascal Mulegwa
This
amicable settlement
should allow the country to recover all the mining and oil assets attributed to the businessman, for an estimated value of 2 billion dollars.
And if the long-awaited and disseminated text does not provide for it, the Minister of Finance, Nicolas Kazadi, is proud to announce that the Israeli businessman will no longer carry out his activities in the DRC: "
Dan Gertler has agreed to return assets.
He also agreed to end his activities in the DRC
.
»
Kinshasa renounces any prosecution against Dan Gertler presented by certain NGOs as the architect of predation under the old regime.
The Congolese side pledged to support the businessman in his plea to have
the US sanctions lifted
.
"
We believe that maintaining these sanctions, once an agreement has been reached, would continue to make it impossible to put these assets into operation
," explains the Minister of Finance.
Because no businessman, no company would risk entering into activities or transactions on assets for which he still weighed US sanctions
”.
Not enough published documents, according to civil society
Other guarantees and concessions from Kinshasa must still be clarified in the terms of implementation of this protocol, which Georges Kapiamba, one of the representatives of civil society, immediately welcomes: "
It is the Congolese people who win because that he had been deprived of his mining and oil assets of more than 2 billion dollars which had practically left his patrimony, but which returned by the fact of this agreement.
»
Another part of civil society believes that opacity still hovers over this protocol and that only part of the documents have been published.
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