Table of Contents
A proposed $9 billion deal for two of Glencore's most important copper and cobalt operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo has hit a significant obstacle, with royalty claims tied to sanctioned Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler slowing a transaction that Washington and its partners had positioned as a strategic move to secure Western access to critical minerals.
The deal centers on a plan by the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium, a U.S.-backed group led by Orion Resource Partners, to acquire a 40% stake in Glencore's Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper Company operations in Congo. Glencore said in February that the proposed transaction implies an enterprise value of roughly $9 billion for the two assets. According to a report carried by ad hoc news, the talks are now being held up by royalty claims associated with Gertler.
Gertler has been under U.S. Treasury sanctions since 2017, when Washington accused him of using his close relationship with former Congolese President Joseph Kabila to secure mining and oil rights through what the Treasury described as corrupt and opaque arrangements. Those sanctions have cast a long shadow over Congo's mining sector ever since, and their effects continue to surface in deals involving assets where Gertler retained financial interests from his years operating at the heart of the country's extractive industry.
Reuters has reported previously that Gertler holds rights to royalty payments tied to Glencore's Congo operations, including assets connected to Mutanda and Kamoto. Glencore and Gertler settled a royalties dispute in 2018, with the miner agreeing to make payments to Gertler in euros rather than U.S. dollars in an attempt to avoid directly violating American sanctions. The arrangement resolved the immediate dispute but left the underlying sensitivity intact, and the issue has continued to surface whenever new investors consider entering assets with that financial history.
The mines themselves are among Glencore's most significant producing assets. Mutanda is one of the world's largest cobalt producers. KCC, or Kamoto Copper Company, is a major copper operation in Katanga province. Both sit inside one of the richest mineral belts on earth, and both have become central to a broader geopolitical argument about who controls the raw materials powering electric vehicles, renewable energy systems and defense technology supply chains.
The Orion consortium's proposed acquisition was being watched closely precisely because of that geopolitical framing. The Financial Times reported last month that the deal is backed by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and Abu Dhabi's ADQ, giving the transaction a weight that went well beyond a standard mining sector deal. Glencore itself described Mutanda and KCC as high quality copper and cobalt assets aligned with a Western push to build supply chains outside of Chinese influence. Reuters reported last month that the talks underscored Washington's growing effort to counter Beijing's dominance in minerals central to the energy transition.
The Gertler complication cuts directly against that ambition. Any buyer backed by U.S. government capital has to navigate sanctions compliance with care. Royalty structures that involve a sanctioned individual, even indirectly, create legal and reputational risk that institutional investors and government-backed funds cannot easily absorb. That is the nature of the delay now reported.
Glencore said the proposed transaction remains subject to due diligence, legally binding documentation and regulatory approvals, language that keeps the deal alive without signaling resolution.
Congo holds an estimated 70% of the world's cobalt supply and is among the top copper producers globally. Getting those resources into Western supply chains has become a priority for the United States and allied economies that have watched China cement its dominance in African mining over the past two decades. The Orion deal was supposed to be one of the clearest demonstrations that Western capital could move decisively in that race. The Gertler complication is a reminder of just how entangled Congo's mining history remains, and how hard it can be to move quickly when legacy deals and sanctions law are both in the room.
