Post #295

🎞 Israeli Mafia in Congo A Jewish businessman helping to launder billions of dollars in one of the poorest countries on Earth — it sounds either like a joke or a Hollywood thriller starring Nicolas Cage 🛫. Young Israeli diamond trader Dan Gertler arrived in Congo in the late 1990s. An inexperienced businessman might easily have stayed unnoticed — if the country’s new president Laurent-Désiré Kabila had not been in desperate need of cash. Dan Gertler(born 23 December 1973) is an Israeli billionaire businessman in natural resources. Until 2022, his group had mining and oil interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has invested in diamonds, iron ore, gold, cobalt, copper, agriculture, and banking. As of 2025 his fortune was estimated at $1.5 billion by Forbes. 💎 That is when the diamond dealer caught the government’s eye. Gertler offered the fragile president $20 million, and in return received a monopoly over diamond trade in the DRC. 🇺🇸 After the death of the elder President Kabila, Gertler became a close ally of his heir, Joseph, serving as his wallet and lobbyist. He even connected the new president with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — a meeting that helped Kabila secure international recognition. 🗳 In 2011, elections caught the regime short of cash again — and once more Gertler was there to help. He offered to buy state shares in mining projects. 🇨🇭 To do this, Gertler teamed up with Swiss giant Glencore, which still mines copper and cobalt in Congo. Together they carried out more than a dozen deals worth over a billion dollars. 💸True, the prices were far below market value — but Kabila did not care, as he won the re-election. ⛔️Gertler’s schemes were so brazen that even the US imposed sanctions on him in 2017. In 2022, Kinshasa did reclaim some of the assets gifted to him — this time at an outrageously inflated price. And so he — as well as his Swiss partners — continues to live comfortably, profiting from minerals stolen from the Congolese people. Devils Below