Kinshasa — The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) state mining firm has signed away royalties from a lucrative mining project to a company owned by a close friend of President Joseph Kabila, a corruption watchdog said on Tuesday. Global Witness, a nongovernmental organisation, said state firm Gecamines signed over the royalties from Swiss mining giant Glencore for a copper project known as KCC to a Cayman Islands company, Africa Horizons Investment. Africa Horizons is owned by Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler, who Global Witness said was involved in murky mining deals in the DRC and was a close friend of Kabila. Gertler’s Fleurette group rejected the claim as "highly misleading" and "based on factually inaccurate information". The January 2015 deal related to the Kamoto copper mines in southeastern DRC and was signed between Gecamines and the Fleurette Group.
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