HOW JEWS AND OTHER GANGSTERS LOOT THE WEALTHIEST LAND ON EARTH
ElParedon
There are no records or statistics of the numbers of people brutalized or
killed in the diamond or cobalt mining areas, like Kolwezi, Mbuji Mayi,
Tshikapa, Banalia, or Kananga in DRC, or Ndola in Zambia, and many of the
victims of security abuses will never be known.
When Gertler and Steinmetz and their buddies came to Congo it was soon clear
that they had to challenge Zimbabwean tycoons John Bredenkamp and Billy
Rautenbach-two cronies of dictator Robert Mugabe involved in pillaging Congo
and Zimbabwe for decades. The United Nations Panel of Experts on DRC named
both men for plundering copper and cobalt from Katanga, and both deal
globally in weapons. Bredenkamp is one of the fifty richest men in England
and he reportedly owns a mansion several doors down from Margaret Thatcher's
residence in London.
On November 7, 2007 it was reported that Dan Gertler was instrumental in
putting together a deal in which Katanga Mining Ltd. would buy rival NIKANOR
for $2.1 billion and merge their adjacent mine projects in Congo to form the
world's largest cobalt company. Also announced was a joint venture between
the Central African Mining & Exploration Company (CAMEC) and another
Gertler-controlled firm called Prairie International Limited.
The CAMEC/Prairie joint venture will exploit DRC's Luita copper processing
facility, develop the Mukondo Mountain cobalt mine-called the world's
richest cobalt mine-and work on "other" exploration properties. Prairie is
majority owned by the family of Dan Gertler. CAMEC is connected to
Zimbabwean/South African/British tycoon Billy Rautenbach.57 The DRC
government effectively banned controversial Zimbabwean businessman Billy
Rautenbach from the country by declaring him persona non grata in July 2007,
but this doesn't seem to stop him from getting what he wants. Rautenbach is
also wanted in South Africa on 300 charges of fraud, corruption and theft.
Rautenbach is a former motor car rally driver who controls a business empire
in Southern and Central Africa through a British Virgin Islands company
called Ridgepoint Overseas Development Limited. In 1998, the short-lived
President of Congo, Laurent Kabila, named Rautenbach the managing director
of La Générale des Carrières et des Mines (Gécamines), one of Africa's
biggest cobalt mines, the Katanga properties of the Union Miniere de Haut
Katanga formerly developed by the Belgian colonial government. Rautenbach
today is one of the Africa's largest exporters of heterogenite (cobalt ore)
from the DRC through his Congo Cobalt Company (CoCoCo), but he also has
shares in two other lucrative DRC mining firms-Boss and Mukondo-which
reportedly earn over US$100 million a month.58
While there has been a lot of Western media fanfare over the Kabila
governments' supposed "independent" review of mining contracts, little
substantive change can be expected.59 Structural factors exploit the
Congolese people and lands and benefit white businessmen, arms dealers,
bankers, and their embraceable black agents. Big business benefits from
perception management articles well-placed in media to give the impression
that the international system is just, that there are watchdogs, checks and
balances.
However, while the DRC and the World Bank present a propaganda front about
their ostensible attention to mining reform and the new mining code,
NIKANOR-Mining Journal reports-"is in the advantageous position of having
entered into a post mining-code contract, 'which makes us [NIKANOR]
relatively comfortable'"60 In other words, the mining review is a sham, it
may force some changes, but it will be cosmetic at best.
Dan Gertler and the Steinmetz Group's partner Jewish-American Nir Livnat is
also a director of Anglovaal Mining with Rick and Brian Menell and Basil
Hersov of the South African Menell and Hersov dynasties.61 Hersov has been
named as a beneficiary of fraud and racketeering involving British BAE
Systems weapons deals with shady offshore companies.62
The octopus of South African connections is a story in itself, with links to
top officials from Britain to Canada, like Canadian Senator J. Trevor Eyton,
and offshore mining companies involved in all the big money (diamonds, gold,
petroleum, cobalt) and big corporations with interlocking directorships:
Coca Cola, Nestlé, General Motors, and the Bush-connected Barrick Gold
Corporation. Barrick, of course, is partnered up with the Oppenheimer/De
Beers firm Anglo-American Corporation at six sites in Africa, including
Congo.
Rick Menell is a director of Bateman Engineering-owned by Benny
Steinmetz-the junior partner of the NIKANOR projects in Katanga. Britain's
Earl of Balfour is a director of both Bateman and NIKANOR. Menell is also
the director of Teal Exploration and Mining, whose directors include Joaquim
Chissano, former President of Mozambique; Murray Hitzman, a Clinton
administration official with the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy (1994-1996); Hannes Meyer, who worked with Anglo-Gold
Ashanti in Congo, 1999-2006, when militias in Ituri were funded to get the
gold out. Teal Exploration also has ties to Anvil Mining and Anglo-American
Corporation.63
Brian Menell, Nir Livnat's associate on the board of Anglovaal, is on the
board of Energem (formerly DiamondWorks) with Tony and Mario Teixeira. The
Livnat connection ties Teixeira into networks that have supported both
Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba in Congo's bloody wars. Energem is also
involved in the trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline, along with Nexant, a subsidiary
of the deep intelligence and defense insider Bechtel Corporation.64
Brian Menell is also on the board of First Africa Oil, which operates in
seven African countries, and First Africa Oil director John Bentley is a
director of Osprey Oil and Gas, whose directors include Carol Bell, a
director of the Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. Bentley is also on the
board of Adastra Minerals-formerly America Mineral Fields (AMF, AMFI, AMX),
a company based in 1995 in Hope, Arkansas-and set up by Robert Friedland and
Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle, notable "friends of Bill" Clinton. Since 1995,
American Mineral Fields has been involved in Brazil, Russia, Norway, Zambia,
Angola and the DRC. A criminal backer of the war in DRC, Jean-Raymond
Boulle, who holds 36.4 % of the company stock, was the former General
Director of De Beers in Zaire, part of the Templesman alliance of terrorism
under the Mobutu regime.65,66
The Gertler/Steinmetz interests apparently curry huge favors with Congo's
number two most powerful man, Augustine Katumba Mwanke, one of Joseph Kabila's
closest allies and financiers, former Governor of Katanga (1998-2001) and
director of Australia's Anvil Mining. The UN Panel of Experts (2002) cited
Mwanke for illegal arms deals and plunder of Congo: Mwanke negotiated arms
purchases through Belgian banks and the DRC mining company MIBA.67
Reportedly, Mwanke personally clears $US 1,000,000 a day through his
interests in Katanga mining deals.68
Anvil Mining has been involved in massacres in DRC.69 Anvil directors
include former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth L. Brown, who served at U.S.
embassies in Brussels, Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville and South Africa. Brown
was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (1987-1989) under George
Schultz and George H.W. Bush and Director of Central African Affairs
(1980-1981). The former top internal intelligence and security chief of the
United Nations Observer's Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(MONUC) has been worked for Anvil mining in Katanga since 2006.70