AVZ Discussion 2022
- Thread starter GazDix
- Start date
FYI. Off-topic but interesting ... but I don't see a replacement to Li-Ion batteries in EV's for next 10 years (IMO).
Sodium-Ion = 140-160Wh/Kg
Li-Ion = 300Wh/Kg approx. ("Panasonic’s “2170” NCA batteries used in 2020 in Tesla’s Model 3 is around 260 Wh/kg")
First passenger car equipped with sodium-ion batteries unveiled in China
Powering EVs with sodium-ion batteries seems to get closer to reality in China. Local carmaker SOL and battery manufacturer Hina Battery Technology unveiled a test vehicle equipped with sodium-ion batteries on February 23. The car came with a driving range of 252 kilometers.www.digitimes.com
Lithium iron phosphate battery - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The technology around both will improve.
But what won't change is the Periodic Table
Lithium is above sodium on the left meaning that it is lower mass ( lighter) than sodium.
The only issue is whether/when technology improves enough to allow the cheaper sodium to prevail.
I would guess that ten years would be an optimistic estimate. But what do I know!
That is normal protocol it does not mean they are bosom buddies. At the end of the day it is all about the Rule of Law and if applied the chinese and the corrupt congolese officials will pay the price.Sorry fellow TSE members…. It was all the DRC politicians shaking hands with the people that are illegally trying to usurp the people of the DRC and our company that made me do it
MoneyBags1348
Top 20
Here’s hoping that one day the people of China will be able to come out from under the spying eyes and oppression of their overlords ‘with their spy balloons’ and rise up and overthrow the corrupt communist leadership and companies that have slowly and insidiously been trying to install their corrupt activities in other countries such as we have seen in countries in and around our region.
The Chinese state usually starts by underpaying their own population so they can lend money to poor countries and hold them in debt, so they can then take ownership of their infrastructure, charge tolls on it and use it for the benefit of China, not the poor countries they usurp.
Seems African states have also forgotten where and how Covid started. With a bit of luck the population of the DRC might also rise up and flush the corrupt politicians out of power. I’ve been keeping an eye on the election process and seeing corruption running rampant around polling officials and areas where the government is not popular.
Power to the population of the DRC and China…. Not their corrupt leaders and ambassadors
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre - Wikipedia
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JAG
Top 20
True that.....just another Chinese belt and road initiative
yet the fuckers keep falling for it....
Hi Bags, how did you go tracking him down? I thought he was Greek. Doran doesn’t sound very Greek.
Spikerama
Regular
Before anyone posts this can I get a sense check from @MoneyBags1348 please?
Is it accurate and fair? I had to paraphrase the copy to make it snackable. Once ok I will put it in the archive.
I will do a French version too.
Attachments
JAG
Top 20
Hi Spiker great job - maybe also emphasize what AVZ valued those shares at.
Regards Silent
Spikerama
Regular
Yeah, I'm sort of trying to leave AVZ out of it for now as I don't want to politicise them. I just want to focus on the key issue here which is the illegal sell off of Dathcom shares at a discount price but if I add in the true value then I have to add in to price i was sold to Zijin which was around $66million and then it all starts to get a bit wordy.
But I will have a look at it again after some consolidated feedback but really these things are designed to make a powerful impact in the social feeds and start the conversation or disrupt it. They are to be used with additional information added by the tweeter. Links to the IGF report, other facts that are missing from the image and so on.
I am making more to sort of come at it from different angles. China next target.
LithiumKing
Regular
Looks like this prominent DRC figure is starting to get involved and ask serious questions on what is happening with AVZ. Has over 85k followers and was a former presidential candidate. Big believer in getting foreign investment (non Chinese) into DRC to progress development and create win win scenarios for the DRC people and foreign investment companies. Very concerned that this will impact the credibility of the DRC with confidence in foreign investment
Attachments
MoneyBags1348
Top 20
Hi Spike…. I can usually get myself into trouble without anyone else’s help!!
The way I’m feeling about Felix and Lukonde shaking hands with the Chinese fuckers trying to usurp AVZ and all of us shareholders might make my opinions a little harsh, but I’m not going to object to your post!
My targeting now is more towards Felix, Lukonde and those promoting the mining sector without promoting accountability now and like you I do it from the point of a shareholder rather than from the actual company
You may press the ‘Send’ button
MoneyBags1348
Top 20
To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if Kayinda kept her position in cabinet and I think she has been exposed enough, I think we need to aim higher now, and more focused at the Chinese
I love the way you have grabbed this new approach by the horns @Spikerama
Personally I’m nearly at the stage I just want this all to go to the ICC, and I think it’s interesting that Antoinette had to take a trip to Japan to get away from it all…. Looks like they are getting desperate for investors
Tshisekedi is getting desperate ahead of the election and hoping the Chinese will build infrastructure in the next few months before the election, pity for him that he doesn’t have people behind him as dedicated as we are
I love the way you have grabbed this new approach by the horns @Spikerama
Personally I’m nearly at the stage I just want this all to go to the ICC, and I think it’s interesting that Antoinette had to take a trip to Japan to get away from it all…. Looks like they are getting desperate for investors
Tshisekedi is getting desperate ahead of the election and hoping the Chinese will build infrastructure in the next few months before the election, pity for him that he doesn’t have people behind him as dedicated as we are
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JAG
Top 20
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MoneyBags1348
Top 20
Thanks Charbella, I know he’s not Doran. I ended up tracking him down through a bullion dealer we both use
Samus
Top 20
Maybe could say on the cheap or given away? Cheaply sounds a bit weird to me. Also you forgot to include snacks
Some interesting reading regarding China's Road and Belt intiative, old but very relevant.
Just think about why AVZ is stuck, not that hard to understand....
Former DRC President Joseph Kabila. Photo by the US Department of State, Wikimedia Commons.
For 250 hot and dusty miles, the two-lane highway cuts through central Africa, its path lined with the carcasses of trucks, buses, and minivans. But this modest road holds outsize value for global markets, connecting some of the continent’s richest mines to the rest of the world—most notably, China.
Along this route, thousands of flatbed trucks haul sheets of copper and sacks of cobalt hydroxide, essential for electric cars and other 21st century technologies. Their drivers must pay steep tolls, as much as $900 for a round trip.
And for almost a decade, records indicate, a cut of those tolls flowed to the family of one politician: Joseph Kabila, the former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The toll payments illustrate how Kabila blurred the lines between state and private business, documents reviewed by Bloomberg News suggest.
By striking such deals with his regime, Chinese companies over the past 15 years came to dominate Congo’s mining industry, down to the roads the country’s minerals travel for export.
The relationship with Kabila has been of strategic benefit to China in its economic rivalry with the U.S. And it has helped Congo, a nation of 105 million, become Africa’s largest producer of copper and the world’s biggest source of cobalt. Yet, as on much of the continent, a foreign power and a country’s elite, not the general population, have reaped the benefits of natural resources.
Like seams of cobalt, business arrangements around the toll road have long been buried. The trail begins with the company Kabila’s government contracted to rebuild and maintain the highway: state-controlled China Railway Group Ltd., one of the largest construction companies in the world.
Someone needed to collect the tolls that would pay for the roadwork, and there the former president’s family saw an opportunity to cash in. Two management companies, one of which was co-founded by a Kabila family investment firm, have misappropriated $238 million since 2015, allege a pair of audits by Congo’s top anticorruption official seen by Bloomberg. China Railway didn’t respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment. Nor did Kabila or his family. In an email, the Chinese embassy in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, said its government always asks Chinese companies to respect local laws and regulations and to “never interfere in Congolese political affairs.”
The Kabilas’ involvement in the toll road came to light through the biggest leak ever of financial documents from Africa. A consortium of five nongovernmental organizations and 19 media outlets, including Bloomberg, gained access to bank records obtained by the Paris-based Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and the French news organization Mediapart.
The resulting articles and reports—published under the name “Congo Hold-Up”—demonstrate the extent to which the country’s most powerful family used the Congo unit of Gabon-based Groupe BGFIBank SA to serve its private interests during a period in which at least $138 million in state funds passed through the lender to Kabila’s family and associates. They also show how Chinese companies transferred tens of millions of dollars to the same network. In December, Kabila’s lawyers denied wrongdoing and called the reporting “a campaign of defamation, slanderous denunciations, denigrations, and untruths.”
At the center of many of the toll-road transactions, the investigation found, is a 59-year-old Chinese businessman, Cong Maohuai, who arrived in Congo a quarter of a century ago and built an array of companies with a hand in the country’s most lucrative industries: infrastructure and the mining of gold, cobalt, copper, tin, and lithium.
Cong also owns the five-star Fleuve Congo Hotel in Kinshasa. Twenty-two stories tall, the glassy building overlooks the compounds of foreign embassies and the homes of many of the country’s richest people, including Kabila, whose main residence in the city is only a few blocks away. Cong, who works out of an office on the hotel grounds, served as president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Congo’s copper and cobalt region from 2008 until 2015, when he became president of the Congo Overseas Chinese Association. He denies any impropriety and says he isn’t a middleman for either Kabila or the Chinese government.
The businessman controls the companies that collect tolls on the mineral highway, one of which he says he acquired from the Kabila family investment firm. Some of this revenue, bank records show, flowed to a company that was used to direct funds to the former president’s relatives and entourage. Although sometimes described in the media as an adviser to the former president, Cong denies any connection to Kabila, beyond occasional meetings at public events.
“Just like any other businessperson in the world, I am free to pursue business opportunities in the DRC or anywhere else in the world, so long as I carry out my activities in compliance with the governing laws,” Cong told the consortium. “That has always been my practice.”
Outside powers have a long history of coveting Congo’s natural resources. It began under Belgian colonial rule and continued during the country’s tumultuous post-independence period, when Congo was caught between sides in the Cold War.
Increased scrutiny of Congo’s mining industry comes after a pivotal moment. Kabila, a former military commander who’d trained in China, assumed power from his father, who was assassinated in 2001. In 2019, Felix Tshisekedi succeeded him as president after the two men made a deal to resolve a disputed election in which another candidate almost certainly won the vote.
Tshisekedi, the son of a well-known opposition politician, initially governed Congo in coalition with Kabila, but he’s since sidelined or co-opted those loyal to his predecessor. Now his administration is revisiting contracts with Chinese and other foreign companies negotiated under Kabila that it views as skewed against the Congolese people.
In the early 2000s, as Congo emerged from years of civil war, China seized an opportunity to buy mines, a process that’s accelerated in recent years. In 2008 the countries agreed that Chinese companies would finance $3 billion worth of infrastructure and build a $3.2 billion copper and cobalt project known as Sicomines, whose tax-free profits would repay the investments.
China Railway teamed up with state-owned Power Construction Corp. of China Ltd., also known as PowerChina. Both companies are major players in President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” initiative, which makes investments in infrastructure around the world, partly as a way to project the country’s growing economic power. PowerChina didn’t respond to requests for comment.
That same year, Congo separately awarded a subsidiary of China Railway the first of three no-bid contracts to rebuild its main export and import routes—including the key mining highway, which runs from Kolwezi to the Zambian border. Tolls would pay for the roadwork.
The highways were in desperate need of an upgrade, and China Railway was on the ground and ready. The roads led to riches. Copper and cobalt exports increased more than 50-fold under Kabila, with about 1.3 million tons of metal trucked out of Congo in 2018, his final year in power.
Much of the highway goes by the grand name of National Road 1. In a country with one of the world’s worst road networks, it stands out for a simple reason: It’s paved. Still, there are few streetlights, and accidents are common. Pedestrians and cyclists share the route, transporting food and other goods to Kolwezi, Likasi, and Lubumbashi—cities along the way founded by Belgian colonists near Congo’s biggest mines.
The road runs past dozens of communities that have mostly missed out on the rewards of Congo’s multibillion-dollar mining industry. Makeshift shacks with orange tarpaulin roofs—the same plastic sheets used to keep hand-dug tunnels from collapsing in the rain—signal the homes of Congolese leading migratory lives on the economic fringes of one of the world’s poorest countries, where three-quarters of the population subsists on less than $1.90 a day, the international poverty line.
Judith Kasongo works as a cook and cleaner in Kanyaka, a village along the toll road. She has no clean water to wash her food. “It’s beyond understanding, and as a Congolese it hurts to see all this wealth go outside the country, as we remain in poverty,” says Kasongo, 31. “We see our minerals developing other countries, while in Congo we don’t have enough roads and face so many difficulties.”
In pictures posted on his Twitter feed, Jules Alingete Key looks more like a general than an auditor. He’s often scowling, and he sometimes wears a uniform the sky-blue color of Congo’s flag, accented with epaulets and gold buttons. Alingete is President Tshisekedi’s inspector general of finance, or, as one Congolese magazine described him, “the sheriff of finance and the public good.” He has become an anticorruption crusader, launching investigations into politicians and businessmen who were untouchable under Kabila. He says he faces constant threats from his targets.
As part of his investigations, Alingete has dug into who really profited from Congo’s most important roads. They were supposed to benefit the country as a whole. There would be at least $1.1 billion worth of new and refurbished toll roads: two connected segments in the Katanga region and another from Kinshasa to the country’s main port of Matadi.
Instead, a large portion of the $757 million in tolls collected on the mining route from 2010 through 2020 vanished, according to the inspector general’s office. On one leg of the highway, in a five-and-a-half-year period starting in 2015, maintenance spending amounted to only $50 million, less than one-fifth of what was generated in tolls during that time, his auditors found. The inspector general’s conclusion: Hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost to overbilling and embezzlement. “On the ground, these funds were not used for roads,” the agency told the consortium, describing a “mechanism of overcharging.”
Alingete identified the culprits: the two toll operators, which were entitled to keep only 10% of the fees collected. One, a company called Société de Gestion Routière du Congo, or SGR, misappropriated $121 million from April 2015 through 2020, according to an audit report seen by the consortium and verified by Alingete.
The Kabilas have a long association with SGR. So does Cong, the Chinese businessman. China Railway initially owned SGR in a joint venture with the Kabila family investment firm, which took full control in April 2015, records show. Yet, 10 days before that ownership change, Cong had represented the company in renewing its toll concession with the Congolese government. He says that SGR’s absent legal representative, who was a senior China Railway manager, had authorized him to sign the contract.
Cong says he acquired SGR in November 2016, though Congo’s corporate registry didn’t reflect the transfer until this year, after the consortium sent him questions. He said he paid the Kabilas no money and instead assumed an undisclosed amount of debt that the presidential family’s company owed China Railway. Cong didn’t provide any documentation for the transaction or the debt.
In that same five-and-a-half-year period, $117 million disappeared from the road’s other toll operator, Société de Gestion de Péage au Congo, or Sopeco, Alingete’s auditors found in a separate report. Cong owns that company, too. The audits don’t cover what happened before 2015, though most of the funds intended for roadwork also “went up in smoke” in the preceding years, the inspector general’s office found.
Like SGR, Sopeco has ties to the Kabilas. From 2013 through January 2016, the two toll operators made 44 payments worth a total of $10.4 million to a company called Congo Construction Co., which delivered more than $30 million to people and entities directly linked to the Kabilas,
Bloomberg reported in November. Almost all the money from the toll-road businesses was withdrawn from BGFI in cash, documents show.
“These payments created clear conflicts of interest and serious risks of fraud and bribery,” according to a report by the Sentry, a Washington-based anticorruption group that was part of the “Congo Hold-Up” consortium.
BGFI’s Congo unit was itself a Kabila family business: The former president’s brother was its chief executive officer, and his sister owned 40% of the bank until 2018, when both were forced out amid accumulating scandals resulting from an earlier data leak by a whistleblower. Before her shares were reclaimed by BGFI’s Gabonese headquarters, Kabila’s sister drew up an abortive plan to sell her stake to three new shareholders, including Cong, who would have paid $2.9 million for a 7.5% interest, bank records show. Cong said he wasn’t aware of such a proposal. In a statement after publication of the first “Congo Hold-Up” stories, the bank acknowledged past governance problems at its Congo branch but questioned the authenticity of the leaked documents.
The consortium found no indications that the Kabila-linked company, Congo Construction, or CCC, did any construction work. Cong said two Sopeco transfers to CCC’s account at BGFI were for a loan agreement and a gravel supply deal, but he didn’t know why SGR sent almost $8 million to the company, because the payments occurred before he took over the business. Cong has other connections to CCC, which was owned by another Chinese businessman. His hotel and the company share the same address. In an email, a bank official described CCC and the Fleuve Congo Hotel “as sister companies housed in the same building.”
Bloomberg couldn’t verify all the figures from the government reports, and Alingete didn’t respond to multiple requests for the complete audit documents. In emails to the consortium, Cong denied the inspector general’s allegations, saying he’d provided documentation showing all the money was spent appropriately, and he considers the matter closed.
L’Agence Congolaise des Grands Travaux, the government agency that oversees most of Congo’s biggest infrastructure projects, including toll roads, told the consortium it isn’t aware that either toll-road company engaged “in any cases of corruption or other improprieties.” But, according to the audit reports, Alingete has urged the government to cancel the contracts held by Sopeco and SGR and replace them with “a much more responsible partner.”
In the waning days of the Kabila administration, Cong won extensions on his concessions to collect tolls on the mineral highway. The bounty would continue into 2025 for one stretch of road and to 2043 on the other, the audits reveal. The companies also signed contracts for tolls and roadwork on two other mineral supply routes that could amount to half a billion dollars.
Alingete’s investigation could threaten Cong’s franchise. But for now, his contracts survive, and business has never been better. Congo’s mining ministry reported last year that copper exports were on track to break all records.
(By William Clowes and Michael Kavanagh)
Just think about why AVZ is stuck, not that hard to understand....
China built Congo a toll road that led straight to the ruling family
Bloomberg News | February 3, 2022 | 10:15 am Battery Metals Intelligence Africa China Cobalt Copper
Former DRC President Joseph Kabila. Photo by the US Department of State, Wikimedia Commons.
For 250 hot and dusty miles, the two-lane highway cuts through central Africa, its path lined with the carcasses of trucks, buses, and minivans. But this modest road holds outsize value for global markets, connecting some of the continent’s richest mines to the rest of the world—most notably, China.
Along this route, thousands of flatbed trucks haul sheets of copper and sacks of cobalt hydroxide, essential for electric cars and other 21st century technologies. Their drivers must pay steep tolls, as much as $900 for a round trip.
And for almost a decade, records indicate, a cut of those tolls flowed to the family of one politician: Joseph Kabila, the former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The toll payments illustrate how Kabila blurred the lines between state and private business, documents reviewed by Bloomberg News suggest.
By striking such deals with his regime, Chinese companies over the past 15 years came to dominate Congo’s mining industry, down to the roads the country’s minerals travel for export.
The relationship with Kabila has been of strategic benefit to China in its economic rivalry with the U.S. And it has helped Congo, a nation of 105 million, become Africa’s largest producer of copper and the world’s biggest source of cobalt. Yet, as on much of the continent, a foreign power and a country’s elite, not the general population, have reaped the benefits of natural resources.
Like seams of cobalt, business arrangements around the toll road have long been buried. The trail begins with the company Kabila’s government contracted to rebuild and maintain the highway: state-controlled China Railway Group Ltd., one of the largest construction companies in the world.
Someone needed to collect the tolls that would pay for the roadwork, and there the former president’s family saw an opportunity to cash in. Two management companies, one of which was co-founded by a Kabila family investment firm, have misappropriated $238 million since 2015, allege a pair of audits by Congo’s top anticorruption official seen by Bloomberg. China Railway didn’t respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment. Nor did Kabila or his family. In an email, the Chinese embassy in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, said its government always asks Chinese companies to respect local laws and regulations and to “never interfere in Congolese political affairs.”
The Kabilas’ involvement in the toll road came to light through the biggest leak ever of financial documents from Africa. A consortium of five nongovernmental organizations and 19 media outlets, including Bloomberg, gained access to bank records obtained by the Paris-based Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and the French news organization Mediapart.
The resulting articles and reports—published under the name “Congo Hold-Up”—demonstrate the extent to which the country’s most powerful family used the Congo unit of Gabon-based Groupe BGFIBank SA to serve its private interests during a period in which at least $138 million in state funds passed through the lender to Kabila’s family and associates. They also show how Chinese companies transferred tens of millions of dollars to the same network. In December, Kabila’s lawyers denied wrongdoing and called the reporting “a campaign of defamation, slanderous denunciations, denigrations, and untruths.”
At the center of many of the toll-road transactions, the investigation found, is a 59-year-old Chinese businessman, Cong Maohuai, who arrived in Congo a quarter of a century ago and built an array of companies with a hand in the country’s most lucrative industries: infrastructure and the mining of gold, cobalt, copper, tin, and lithium.
Cong also owns the five-star Fleuve Congo Hotel in Kinshasa. Twenty-two stories tall, the glassy building overlooks the compounds of foreign embassies and the homes of many of the country’s richest people, including Kabila, whose main residence in the city is only a few blocks away. Cong, who works out of an office on the hotel grounds, served as president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Congo’s copper and cobalt region from 2008 until 2015, when he became president of the Congo Overseas Chinese Association. He denies any impropriety and says he isn’t a middleman for either Kabila or the Chinese government.
The businessman controls the companies that collect tolls on the mineral highway, one of which he says he acquired from the Kabila family investment firm. Some of this revenue, bank records show, flowed to a company that was used to direct funds to the former president’s relatives and entourage. Although sometimes described in the media as an adviser to the former president, Cong denies any connection to Kabila, beyond occasional meetings at public events.
“Just like any other businessperson in the world, I am free to pursue business opportunities in the DRC or anywhere else in the world, so long as I carry out my activities in compliance with the governing laws,” Cong told the consortium. “That has always been my practice.”
Outside powers have a long history of coveting Congo’s natural resources. It began under Belgian colonial rule and continued during the country’s tumultuous post-independence period, when Congo was caught between sides in the Cold War.
Increased scrutiny of Congo’s mining industry comes after a pivotal moment. Kabila, a former military commander who’d trained in China, assumed power from his father, who was assassinated in 2001. In 2019, Felix Tshisekedi succeeded him as president after the two men made a deal to resolve a disputed election in which another candidate almost certainly won the vote.
Tshisekedi, the son of a well-known opposition politician, initially governed Congo in coalition with Kabila, but he’s since sidelined or co-opted those loyal to his predecessor. Now his administration is revisiting contracts with Chinese and other foreign companies negotiated under Kabila that it views as skewed against the Congolese people.
In the early 2000s, as Congo emerged from years of civil war, China seized an opportunity to buy mines, a process that’s accelerated in recent years. In 2008 the countries agreed that Chinese companies would finance $3 billion worth of infrastructure and build a $3.2 billion copper and cobalt project known as Sicomines, whose tax-free profits would repay the investments.
China Railway teamed up with state-owned Power Construction Corp. of China Ltd., also known as PowerChina. Both companies are major players in President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” initiative, which makes investments in infrastructure around the world, partly as a way to project the country’s growing economic power. PowerChina didn’t respond to requests for comment.
That same year, Congo separately awarded a subsidiary of China Railway the first of three no-bid contracts to rebuild its main export and import routes—including the key mining highway, which runs from Kolwezi to the Zambian border. Tolls would pay for the roadwork.
The highways were in desperate need of an upgrade, and China Railway was on the ground and ready. The roads led to riches. Copper and cobalt exports increased more than 50-fold under Kabila, with about 1.3 million tons of metal trucked out of Congo in 2018, his final year in power.
Much of the highway goes by the grand name of National Road 1. In a country with one of the world’s worst road networks, it stands out for a simple reason: It’s paved. Still, there are few streetlights, and accidents are common. Pedestrians and cyclists share the route, transporting food and other goods to Kolwezi, Likasi, and Lubumbashi—cities along the way founded by Belgian colonists near Congo’s biggest mines.
The road runs past dozens of communities that have mostly missed out on the rewards of Congo’s multibillion-dollar mining industry. Makeshift shacks with orange tarpaulin roofs—the same plastic sheets used to keep hand-dug tunnels from collapsing in the rain—signal the homes of Congolese leading migratory lives on the economic fringes of one of the world’s poorest countries, where three-quarters of the population subsists on less than $1.90 a day, the international poverty line.
Judith Kasongo works as a cook and cleaner in Kanyaka, a village along the toll road. She has no clean water to wash her food. “It’s beyond understanding, and as a Congolese it hurts to see all this wealth go outside the country, as we remain in poverty,” says Kasongo, 31. “We see our minerals developing other countries, while in Congo we don’t have enough roads and face so many difficulties.”
In pictures posted on his Twitter feed, Jules Alingete Key looks more like a general than an auditor. He’s often scowling, and he sometimes wears a uniform the sky-blue color of Congo’s flag, accented with epaulets and gold buttons. Alingete is President Tshisekedi’s inspector general of finance, or, as one Congolese magazine described him, “the sheriff of finance and the public good.” He has become an anticorruption crusader, launching investigations into politicians and businessmen who were untouchable under Kabila. He says he faces constant threats from his targets.
As part of his investigations, Alingete has dug into who really profited from Congo’s most important roads. They were supposed to benefit the country as a whole. There would be at least $1.1 billion worth of new and refurbished toll roads: two connected segments in the Katanga region and another from Kinshasa to the country’s main port of Matadi.
Instead, a large portion of the $757 million in tolls collected on the mining route from 2010 through 2020 vanished, according to the inspector general’s office. On one leg of the highway, in a five-and-a-half-year period starting in 2015, maintenance spending amounted to only $50 million, less than one-fifth of what was generated in tolls during that time, his auditors found. The inspector general’s conclusion: Hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost to overbilling and embezzlement. “On the ground, these funds were not used for roads,” the agency told the consortium, describing a “mechanism of overcharging.”
Alingete identified the culprits: the two toll operators, which were entitled to keep only 10% of the fees collected. One, a company called Société de Gestion Routière du Congo, or SGR, misappropriated $121 million from April 2015 through 2020, according to an audit report seen by the consortium and verified by Alingete.
The Kabilas have a long association with SGR. So does Cong, the Chinese businessman. China Railway initially owned SGR in a joint venture with the Kabila family investment firm, which took full control in April 2015, records show. Yet, 10 days before that ownership change, Cong had represented the company in renewing its toll concession with the Congolese government. He says that SGR’s absent legal representative, who was a senior China Railway manager, had authorized him to sign the contract.
Cong says he acquired SGR in November 2016, though Congo’s corporate registry didn’t reflect the transfer until this year, after the consortium sent him questions. He said he paid the Kabilas no money and instead assumed an undisclosed amount of debt that the presidential family’s company owed China Railway. Cong didn’t provide any documentation for the transaction or the debt.
In that same five-and-a-half-year period, $117 million disappeared from the road’s other toll operator, Société de Gestion de Péage au Congo, or Sopeco, Alingete’s auditors found in a separate report. Cong owns that company, too. The audits don’t cover what happened before 2015, though most of the funds intended for roadwork also “went up in smoke” in the preceding years, the inspector general’s office found.
Like SGR, Sopeco has ties to the Kabilas. From 2013 through January 2016, the two toll operators made 44 payments worth a total of $10.4 million to a company called Congo Construction Co., which delivered more than $30 million to people and entities directly linked to the Kabilas,
Bloomberg reported in November. Almost all the money from the toll-road businesses was withdrawn from BGFI in cash, documents show.
“These payments created clear conflicts of interest and serious risks of fraud and bribery,” according to a report by the Sentry, a Washington-based anticorruption group that was part of the “Congo Hold-Up” consortium.
BGFI’s Congo unit was itself a Kabila family business: The former president’s brother was its chief executive officer, and his sister owned 40% of the bank until 2018, when both were forced out amid accumulating scandals resulting from an earlier data leak by a whistleblower. Before her shares were reclaimed by BGFI’s Gabonese headquarters, Kabila’s sister drew up an abortive plan to sell her stake to three new shareholders, including Cong, who would have paid $2.9 million for a 7.5% interest, bank records show. Cong said he wasn’t aware of such a proposal. In a statement after publication of the first “Congo Hold-Up” stories, the bank acknowledged past governance problems at its Congo branch but questioned the authenticity of the leaked documents.
The consortium found no indications that the Kabila-linked company, Congo Construction, or CCC, did any construction work. Cong said two Sopeco transfers to CCC’s account at BGFI were for a loan agreement and a gravel supply deal, but he didn’t know why SGR sent almost $8 million to the company, because the payments occurred before he took over the business. Cong has other connections to CCC, which was owned by another Chinese businessman. His hotel and the company share the same address. In an email, a bank official described CCC and the Fleuve Congo Hotel “as sister companies housed in the same building.”
Bloomberg couldn’t verify all the figures from the government reports, and Alingete didn’t respond to multiple requests for the complete audit documents. In emails to the consortium, Cong denied the inspector general’s allegations, saying he’d provided documentation showing all the money was spent appropriately, and he considers the matter closed.
L’Agence Congolaise des Grands Travaux, the government agency that oversees most of Congo’s biggest infrastructure projects, including toll roads, told the consortium it isn’t aware that either toll-road company engaged “in any cases of corruption or other improprieties.” But, according to the audit reports, Alingete has urged the government to cancel the contracts held by Sopeco and SGR and replace them with “a much more responsible partner.”
In the waning days of the Kabila administration, Cong won extensions on his concessions to collect tolls on the mineral highway. The bounty would continue into 2025 for one stretch of road and to 2043 on the other, the audits reveal. The companies also signed contracts for tolls and roadwork on two other mineral supply routes that could amount to half a billion dollars.
Alingete’s investigation could threaten Cong’s franchise. But for now, his contracts survive, and business has never been better. Congo’s mining ministry reported last year that copper exports were on track to break all records.
(By William Clowes and Michael Kavanagh)
Winenut
Go AVZ!
A bit over a week and a half ago we sent a combined effort letter to the AFR regarding the biased and compromised reporting of Tommy the twat and the serious errors and omissions in his articles regarding AVZ
Thank you to all who made contributions and suggestions for the content and also those who reviewed the various drafts....very much appreciated everyone
The letter was signed off by myself, ptlas and Dazmac66
For the record we received no response from the AFR so one can assume they couldn't give a rats or didn't want to acknowledge the issues raised
For those that are interested a copy of the letter is posted below
Feel free to use all or parts of the letter for your own purposes if it is helpful in any way
Cheers
Sent to the editor of the AFR:-
Dear Sir / Madam,
We would like to make a formal complaint about Tom Richardson of the AFR and his recent articles regarding AVZ Minerals. The 'stories' are extremely one sided, overly suggestive and have a number of factual errors or omissions.
For background AVZ Minerals (AVZ) is an Australian domiciled company that through its subsidiary AVZ International Pty Ltd holds a majority interest in the entity Dathcom Mining which has rightfully and legally secured tenement PE 13359 in the region of Manono in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The tenement PE 13359 in Manono contains what is currently considered to be the world’s largest, known, hard rock, Lithium resource.
AVZ and its management have worked extensively to legally obtain the mining rights in relation to PE 13359 working closely with the DRC government, all relevant authorities, always adhering to the DRC mining code and at all times applying the provisions and guidelines of the DRC anti-corruption policy throughout its dealings and operations in country.
We would specifically like bring to your attention that over the last 6 years in the DRC, AVZ (in relation to the development of the Manono Lithium resource) has carried out the following activities:
The actions these participants are currently undertaking are explicitly in non-compliance with the DRC mining code and are blocking the rightful issue of the mining license. It should be noted that via official ministerial decree the mining license has effectively already been granted to AVZ, again this is through the majority interest in Dathcom Mining held by its subsidiary AVZ International Pty Ltd.
The actions of these participants has also allowed a Chinese company "Zijin" to fraudulently acquire 15% of Dathcom Mining for a fraction of its determined value as stated in the DRC Inspector General of Finance report released by the 'Inspection Générale des Finances' (IGF) headed by Jules Alingete.
The detailed accomplishments by AVZ and the results of the DRC Inspector General of Finance report were not commented on by Tom Richardson in any of his articles, to allow readers a fair and un-biased view of the Company.
We note the recent ruling against the AFR for very similar reporting where Justice Anna Katzmann found that the articles were "spiced with an account of suspicious circumstances" against a politician. And that, "The ordinary reasonable reader is prone to loose thinking and reads between the lines. And that is precisely what the respondents encouraged them to do. This article was awash with innuendo."
While we encourage the truth to be reported about ongoing events, we would expect these reports to be factual and unbiased without leading the readers to a specific view or opinion – including a fact-check and review on the sources/tip offs that journalists may receive.
Additionally, it has come to our attention that there may be a relationship between Tom Richardson and short sellers that could well be considered as colluding. The concern is that the journalist may be using their position and influence to benefit the short sellers and negatively impact the companies or assets they are reporting on. This type of behaviour raises serious ethical questions and could lead to the dissemination of false or misleading information.
Furthermore, we are concerned about the lack of disclosure of this relationship between Tom Richardson and the short sellers. Financial journalists have a duty to disclose any conflicts of interest to ensure that their reporting is impartial and trustworthy. The lack of disclosure in this case could be interpreted as an attempt to conceal the relationship and further undermine the credibility of financial journalism.
In relation to the preceding disclosure matters it has become abundantly clear through the content of Tom Richardson’s articles that there is an undeniable connection between the material he uses as reference and information published/provided/leaked by the veiled and secretive short selling entity Boatman Capital. The complete lack of disclosure regarding this connection and the serious implications contained therein are inherently disturbing.
We note that our concerns are in accordance with the following paragraphs of the Charter of Editorial Independence, as noted on the AFR’s website:
We respectfully request the AFR investigate and review the serious matters raised in this letter.
Regards,
Thank you to all who made contributions and suggestions for the content and also those who reviewed the various drafts....very much appreciated everyone
The letter was signed off by myself, ptlas and Dazmac66
For the record we received no response from the AFR so one can assume they couldn't give a rats or didn't want to acknowledge the issues raised
For those that are interested a copy of the letter is posted below
Feel free to use all or parts of the letter for your own purposes if it is helpful in any way
Cheers
Sent to the editor of the AFR:-
Dear Sir / Madam,
We would like to make a formal complaint about Tom Richardson of the AFR and his recent articles regarding AVZ Minerals. The 'stories' are extremely one sided, overly suggestive and have a number of factual errors or omissions.
For background AVZ Minerals (AVZ) is an Australian domiciled company that through its subsidiary AVZ International Pty Ltd holds a majority interest in the entity Dathcom Mining which has rightfully and legally secured tenement PE 13359 in the region of Manono in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The tenement PE 13359 in Manono contains what is currently considered to be the world’s largest, known, hard rock, Lithium resource.
AVZ and its management have worked extensively to legally obtain the mining rights in relation to PE 13359 working closely with the DRC government, all relevant authorities, always adhering to the DRC mining code and at all times applying the provisions and guidelines of the DRC anti-corruption policy throughout its dealings and operations in country.
We would specifically like bring to your attention that over the last 6 years in the DRC, AVZ (in relation to the development of the Manono Lithium resource) has carried out the following activities:
- Soil Sampling
- Field Mapping
- Consulting
- Drilling
- Metallurgical Testing
- Completing a FEED Study
- Environmental Study and Impact Assessment Reports including Groundwater Management
- Completion of a 160 page Definitive Feasibility Study
- Liaising with the DRC Government with respect to a Special Economic Zone (“SEZ”) Agreement
- Tendering for Mining Infrastructure
- Legally Obtaining and Paying for an Increased Share of Dathcom Mining
- Obtaining Several Offtake Agreements for both Lithium and Tin
- Raising Capital, Negotiating Funding with Pan African DFI’s and a Funding and Offtake Agreement with CATH
- Presenting at the Battery Minerals Conference
- Legally Fulfilling all Requirements to Obtain the Mining License via Dathcom Mining
- Including Receiving the Ministerial Decree to Award the Mining License and producing an 85 page Sustainability Report
- Investing over $100 million dollars in furthering the project; and
- Supporting the Local Community
The actions these participants are currently undertaking are explicitly in non-compliance with the DRC mining code and are blocking the rightful issue of the mining license. It should be noted that via official ministerial decree the mining license has effectively already been granted to AVZ, again this is through the majority interest in Dathcom Mining held by its subsidiary AVZ International Pty Ltd.
The actions of these participants has also allowed a Chinese company "Zijin" to fraudulently acquire 15% of Dathcom Mining for a fraction of its determined value as stated in the DRC Inspector General of Finance report released by the 'Inspection Générale des Finances' (IGF) headed by Jules Alingete.
The detailed accomplishments by AVZ and the results of the DRC Inspector General of Finance report were not commented on by Tom Richardson in any of his articles, to allow readers a fair and un-biased view of the Company.
We note the recent ruling against the AFR for very similar reporting where Justice Anna Katzmann found that the articles were "spiced with an account of suspicious circumstances" against a politician. And that, "The ordinary reasonable reader is prone to loose thinking and reads between the lines. And that is precisely what the respondents encouraged them to do. This article was awash with innuendo."
While we encourage the truth to be reported about ongoing events, we would expect these reports to be factual and unbiased without leading the readers to a specific view or opinion – including a fact-check and review on the sources/tip offs that journalists may receive.
Additionally, it has come to our attention that there may be a relationship between Tom Richardson and short sellers that could well be considered as colluding. The concern is that the journalist may be using their position and influence to benefit the short sellers and negatively impact the companies or assets they are reporting on. This type of behaviour raises serious ethical questions and could lead to the dissemination of false or misleading information.
Furthermore, we are concerned about the lack of disclosure of this relationship between Tom Richardson and the short sellers. Financial journalists have a duty to disclose any conflicts of interest to ensure that their reporting is impartial and trustworthy. The lack of disclosure in this case could be interpreted as an attempt to conceal the relationship and further undermine the credibility of financial journalism.
In relation to the preceding disclosure matters it has become abundantly clear through the content of Tom Richardson’s articles that there is an undeniable connection between the material he uses as reference and information published/provided/leaked by the veiled and secretive short selling entity Boatman Capital. The complete lack of disclosure regarding this connection and the serious implications contained therein are inherently disturbing.
We note that our concerns are in accordance with the following paragraphs of the Charter of Editorial Independence, as noted on the AFR’s website:
- That Nine publicly declare a commitment to the fundamental and longstanding principle of editorial independence.
- That Nine acknowledges that journalists, artists and photographers must record the affairs of the city, state, nation and the world fairly, fully and regardless of any commercial, political or personal interests, including those of any proprietors, shareholders or board members.
- That the editors must at all times carry out their duties in a way that preserves the independence and integrity of the mastheads.
We respectfully request the AFR investigate and review the serious matters raised in this letter.
Regards,
Last edited:
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