Post #166

🇨🇩 DRC: Battle for Gold [ #Investigation] Chapter 1: A Cheerful Retirement Do you have plans for retirement? Personally, I want to save enough money and then just sit at home growing cabbage. But not everyone finds such a peaceful lifestyle appealing. For example, businessman and banker, former DRC Vice Minister Victor Kasongo prefers racketeering and asset grabbing. After years of serving his homeland and former Congolese President Joseph Kabila, he decided to pursue something more exciting — and tried to seize the gold assets of the Canadian company Banro (spoiler: it didn’t work out as he planned). 👆 If that kind of leisure activity sounds interesting, let me tell you how it went in practice: But first, let me introduce you to the Canadian company Banro. Banro was unlucky — the company bet everything on Congo and spectacularly lost in a brutal African roulette. 🔸 Initially, Banro tried to enter the DRC gold mining sector in the late 1990s but failed because of the 1998–2003 war. 🔸 When Banro finally gained access to the Congolese deposits — specifically Twangiza, Namoya, Kamituga, and Lugushwa — it took about ten more years of design and construction work before the Twangiza mine poured its first gold bar in 2012. 🔸 By the time the second mine, Namoya, produced its first gold in 2016, the company was already doomed, though that wasn’t yet obvious. After the opening of Namoya, company workers were attacked by local militias of the Mai-Mai Malaika group, who made money from artisanal mining at the same site. 🔸 Between 2016 and 2019, Banro had to suspend its operations at least three times because of these attacks, and after four Namoya employees were kidnapped in July 2019, Banro declared force majeure and permanently ceased all operations in the DRC. ⏩ Some local insurgents — sure, that happens all the time in these parts. But did that really mean they had to shut down completely? ⏪ 🔸Meanwhile, starting in 2014, the company had accumulated heavy debt with its main investors — the American Gramercy Fund Management andthe Chinese Baiyin Nonferrous Group. Due to constant disruptions, Banro became unable to meet its obligations, leading to a restructuring in 2018, after which Baiyin and Gramercy significantly increased their stakes in the company. In the end, the Chinese held about 32% of Banro — an important number, remember it. 🔸 In 2020, after declaring force majeure, Banro initiated a preventive settlement procedure with its local creditors in the DRC. And this is where Victor Kasongo Shomari entered the scene — former Vice Minister of Mines, mining entrepreneur, associate (and possibly distant relative) of ex-President Joseph Kabila, and a senior figure in banks and funds that managed the economic interests of the former president and his entourage. 🔸Kasongo heads the Shomka Group, which, according to him, obtained control over Banro’s assets through a ruling by the Commercial Court of Kinshasa during that same preventive settlement process — or so he claims loudly everywhere. The funny thing is that before this process, Shomka Group had absolutely nothing to do with Banro - but we'll discuss it in the second part. Scroll down. 👇 Devils Below