Dan Gertler

Net Worth: $2.2 billion An emerging face of irresponsible capitalism in Africa, Dan Gertler took his family’s fortune in diamonds and invested it in mining assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While in his 20s, he became a friend of Joseph Kabila, who then ran the military and is now the DRC’s president. Documents revealed within the Paradise Papers showed that several times over 2008 and 2009, Gertler was called in to negotiate with DRC authorities over the struggling Katanga copper mine in the south-east of the country, which was mired in stalled talks to secure a joint-venture agreement with DRC’s state-run miner Gécamines. In 2009, Glencore, through a loan offer, took effective control of Katanga, but also kept Gertler’s interest in the company by secretly loaning his company Lora Enterprises $45m in pledged shares for him to take part in the loan. Gertler, known for his close relationship with DRC’s president and key adviser, was also explicitly mandated with securing the mining agreement. Glencore loaned Gertler the $45m on the express condition that it would be repayable if an agreement was not reached with DRC authorities. Katanga ultimately won a mining agreement discounted by more than $400m on the initial signing price demanded by the DRC authorities. Glencore and Gertler’s dealings in DRC were exposed in the Paradise Papers, a leaked cache of more than 13m documents, most of which came from within the law firm Appleby, which specialises in offshore tax structures for the global super-wealthy. Gertler’s involvement in DRC spans nearly two decades. He was cited by a 2001 UN investigation that said he had given the then DRC president $20m to buy weapons to equip his army against rebel groups in exchange for a monopoly on the country’s diamonds, and a 2013 Africa Progress Panel report said a string of mining deals struck by companies linked to him had deprived the country of more than $1.3bn in potential revenue. Glencore cut ties with Gertler in February, buying him out of his share in their shared assets in DRC for $534m. That decision followed a September 2016 US Department of Justice deferred prosecution agreement against the New York hedge fund Och-Ziff which, while not naming Gertler, implicated “an Israeli businessman” precisely matching Gertler’s description and running companies owned by him in bribing DRC government officials for tens of millions of dollars.