Beny Steinmetz gets jail, Dan Gertler a reprieve

IN DECEMBER 2017 Donald Trump’s administration imposed financial sanctions on Dan Gertler. That came as a shock to the government of Joseph Kabila, who was then the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr Gertler, who was named alongside several allegedly crooked politicians and businessmen, was one of Mr Kabila’s closest friends. He was also a middleman who had sold much of Congo’s wealth in minerals to the world since arriving there in the wake of war in 1997.America’s Treasury department said that Mr Gertler had “amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals”. Between 2010 and 2012 alone Congo had “lost over $1.36 billion in revenues from the underpricing of mining assets that were sold to offshore companies linked to” the Israeli billionaire, it said. The sanctions froze Mr Gertler’s bank accounts and prevented any firm from doing business with him in dollars.