Meanwhile, global demand for cobalt and copper was accelerating as battery-powered devices, like cell phones, became a necessity for modern life, and yet Congo remained poor and conflict-wracked. Many American firms, wary of corruption and instability, decided to stay away from business dealings in the region. During this same period, however, China, which was intensifying its quest to build electric cars to reduce pollution in its cities, jumped at the opportunity to get a handle on the supply chain. Beijing hammered out deals with Kabila to build roads and hospitals in exchange for mining rights.
“Twenty-five years ago we did not look over a horizon to say, ‘China’s going to become an economic power whose interests are not aligned with ours,’ ” Sanderson, the US diplomat, reflected. A lust for cheaper goods, cheaper electronics, had blinded Washington to Beijing’s increasing control throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s. That’s not to say everyone ignored the opportunity to make a buck in one of the world’s poorest countries. Among the deployers of foreign capital eager to invest in the boom years was the giant New York hedge fund Och-Ziff (since rebranded as Sculptor Capital). Years later Och-Ziff, too, would plead guilty to paying bribes in several African countries, including Congo. It was alleged that the hedge fund used a “foreign agent” to funnel at least $25 million to an unnamed Congolese official. That official’s résumé matched Katumba’s, and the agent was a fixer whom the Justice Department described only as an “Israeli businessman” with significant interests in Congo’s copper and diamond mining sectors. Media outlets and NGOs later identified that agent as Gertler (though he was never charged in the case). “The DRC landscape is in the making and I am shaping it—like no one else,” the agent wrote in an email recovered by federal prosecutors.
In 2012 Katumba died in a plane crash. Gertler told people, including his Och-Ziff investors, that he was upset. But others read his mood differently. As one text message between Moises Gertner and another friend put it, upon learning of Katumba’s death: “Our friend is happy he is going to save paying a lot of money,” presumably referencing the payments made from Gertler to Katumba.
And so Gertler, ever searching for opportunity, refocused his efforts on Joseph Kabila. In public, Gertler hailed Kabila’s efforts to run the country. “He’s the most promising new president in the world—a new Mandela,” he told Newsweek. But soon Gertler also began to use the same kind of language to describe himself: “I should get a Nobel Prize,” Gertler told journalists from Bloomberg in 2012. “They need people like us, who come and put billions in the ground. Without this, the resources are worth nothing.”
By this time, Gertler had also attracted the attention of international law enforcement, and investors in Gertler’s businesses were getting nervous. On December 21, 2017, Gertler was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury for amassing a fortune “through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” The Israeli businessman had weathered bad press, but the sanctions made him radioactive: Anyone who dealt with him now ran the substantial risk of running afoul of US law.
