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A company formerly linked to US-sanctioned Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler has paid 25.8 million euros, about $30 million, to settle a Dutch criminal probe into bribery tied to copper and cobalt mining deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dutch prosecutors announced Tuesday.
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service said it had issued the criminal order against Fleurette, a Netherlands-registered firm that served as the holding company for the Gertler group, on March 6. The settlement closes an eight-year investigation and confirms, in the prosecution service's own words, that Fleurette committed bribery.
"By accepting this criminal settlement, the public prosecutor establishes that Fleurette, acting in concert with others, is guilty of bribing foreign public officials in the DRC in connection with the acquisition of mining licences," the office said in a statement.
The payments at the centre of the probe were made between 2010 and 2011 and directed to Augustin Katumba Mwanke, the late financial and political adviser to then-DRC President Joseph Kabila. Investigators suspected the money was paid to secure copper and cobalt mining rights at prices well below market value.
Fleurette, in a statement issued Monday before the Dutch announcement, confirmed it had paid the settlement and insisted the fine closed the matter without criminal charges against any individuals. "To a close an eight-year investigation into historic matters dating back to 2010, without charge against any individuals or other entities," the company said.
That point, that no charges were filed against Gertler personally, matters. Lawyers representing Fleurette confirmed Dutch authorities would not pursue the billionaire individually.
Gertler, now 52, has spent decades at the centre of one of the most scrutinised mining empires in Africa. He arrived in the DRC in the late 1990s as a diamond trader, built a close personal friendship with Kabila that extended to attending his 2006 wedding, and parlayed that access into a sprawling web of mining concessions covering copper, cobalt, gold and oil. By his peak, his name appeared more than 200 times in the Panama Papers, which brought his DRC dealings into public view in 2016.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Gertler in December 2017, accusing him of using his friendship with Kabila to act as a middleman for mining asset sales, requiring some multinational companies to go through him to access the Congolese state. Treasury estimated the DRC lost more than $1.36 billion in revenues between 2010 and 2012 alone from the underpricing of assets sold to Gertler-linked offshore companies. He has always denied any wrongdoing.
Glencore, the Swiss commodities giant that operated as Gertler's main mining partner in the DRC across assets including the Mutanda, Kansuki and Katanga mines, was separately investigated by Dutch authorities. That probe was dropped after Glencore agreed in August 2024 to pay a fine of 2 million Swiss francs plus 150 million Swiss francs in compensatory payments in Switzerland, where a court found the company had failed to prevent the bribery of a Congolese official by a business partner. That business partner was widely reported to be Gertler. Glencore has stated it rejected the findings but waived its right to appeal.
The Dutch investigation, launched in 2018 by the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service's Anti-Corruption Centre, had examined whether both Fleurette and Glencore paid bribes to secure the DRC mining rights. With Glencore's matter resolved in Switzerland and Fleurette's settlement now concluded, the Dutch chapter is closed.
Trump's first administration quietly reversed some of the U.S. sanctions against Gertler before leaving office. The Biden administration reinstated them in March 2021. Discussions have been reported about a potential path for Gertler to exit his remaining DRC interests and eventually regain access to the U.S. financial system, though no agreement has been finalized.
In February 2022, the Congolese state announced a separate out-of-court settlement with Gertler under which his Ventora Group transferred mining and oil assets valued at more than $2 billion back to the DRC. Civil society groups in Congo criticized that deal as insufficiently transparent and demanded the full agreement be made public.
The $30 million Dutch settlement is a fraction of what anti-corruption researchers estimate the DRC lost through Gertler's dealings. A 2021 financial investigation by the Congo is Not for Sale coalition put the total lost revenue at $1.95 billion between 2003 and 2021, with a further $1.76 billion in future royalty payments potentially still owed to Gertler companies through 2039. The $30 million closes a legal file in the Netherlands. It does not close the broader accounting.
