Ten years ago, 700 workers at the Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings (KMT) mine in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo, were ordered to stop their work. They downed their tools, stopping trucks in the middle of the road and leaving pipes half cut, and gathered at the gate. A company official addressed the confused crowd telling them the cobalt and copper mine was being forced to close. The Congolese government had unlawfully stripped First Quantum Minerals, a Canadian company which owned the mine, of its license. The workers no longer had jobs.
“You will get three months of severance pay,” one former worker recalls a senior manager saying. “We will pursue negotiations with your government and promise to hire you back as soon as we resume our activities.” But no one was hired back. And in violation of Congolese employment law, the workers received little or no compensation.
The workers lost their jobs for one simple reason: corruption. Notorious Israeli businessman Dan Gertler had his eye on the lucrative mine. Working alongside his Congolese partners (former president Joseph Kabila and presidential advisor Katumba Mwanke) and the American hedge fund Och-Ziff, he was awarded the rights to the mine for a mere $60 million within months of its closure. In the years that followed, it was sold on to the Kazakh multinational mining company Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) for an estimated $685 million. Both sales were far below commercial valuations of the mine. It was a classic Gertler “flip” which netted him, and his partners, a substantial profit.

Dan Och, founder of U.S. hedge fund Och-Ziff (rebranded as Sculptor), with actor Michael Douglas, at a New York City gala. Credit: Getty Images.
The details of this corrupt scheme were set out in detail in papers released by U.S. judicial officials in 2016 when the hedge fund Och-Ziff (now called Sculptor) admitted violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Its subsidiary, OZ Africa, pleaded guilty to criminal charges.
While unscrupulous businessmen and Congolese officials made millions, the consequences for the workers and the communities around the mine were devastating. Workers suddenly lost a stable income and valuable benefits, such as free healthcare for them and their families. The workers returned home that fateful day deeply worried. Employment in the Kolwezi area was, and still is, extremely scarce. The vast majority of its residents lived on less than $1 a day.
In the years that followed the effects of the job losses were clear. One former worker interviewed by RAID in April 2019 said: “I don’t earn much now. It’s much less than with KMT. I always tell myself that if I still had my job at KMT, I would be much better. Only one of my children can go to school. The others can’t go – they have to take turns to attend school.”