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Figure 3:
Companies originating in the EU, and companies based in Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Hong Kong (China), India,
Malaysia, Thailand, Rwanda, South Africa, Switzerland, The Netherlands, The Russian Federation, The United Arab Emirates, and
the UK and Northern Ireland are involved in exporting minerals and timber from conflict regions in the DRC (UNSC, 2008). Principle
export points are Mombasa and Dar Es Salaam.
FDLR, CDNP and even FADRC have been involved in trans-
port of timber, minerals and charcoal from illegal exploitation
(UNSC, 2008). FDLR controls many mines in North and South
Kivu and are involved in trafficking minerals by roads and
trucks from Walikale and controls the vast majority of territory
in the mineral-rich Kahuzi Biega National Park.
There are several comptoirs involved in selling the minerals
on to companies such as Groupe Olive, Etablissement Muyeye,
MDM, World Mining Company (WMC) and Panju, that are the
main recipients of and top exporters of cassiterite, coltan and
wolframite – with government export licences (UNSC, 2008).
Etablissement Namukaya is also involved in pre-financing gold
purchases from FDLR territory (UNSC, 2008). CNDP for ex-
ample, also make revenues from taxing of the minerals, such
as 0.20 USD per kilogram of minerals at checkpoints set up
near or around mines (UNSC, 2008). As the mineral produc-
tion in the region is at least 15,000 tons a year, the incomes to
the militias from these “road” taxes are thus also here millions
of dollars annually.
It is also likely that the actual exports are much higher even
than this. As many of the companies or their subsidiaries –
unlike the multinational buyers – are also fronts for some of
the militias, it is clear that the incomes from the exploitation
of resources in the region and the taxes are central in the con-
tinuation of the conflict. It also appears that that much of the
low-profile “taxing” in villages etc is done to finance some of
the troops on a daily basis, whereas as the really large sums
never reach the low-level troops, who are frequently left to ob-
tain their needs through direct plundering.
The official exports in 2007 from DRC were 14,694 tons of
cassiterite valued at 45 million USD, 1,193 tons of wolframite
ROLE OF MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES
AND NETWORKS
valued at 4.27 million USD, and 393 tons of coltan valued at
5.42 million USD (UNSC, 2008). These numbers are around
61–70% of what the official production estimates are listed as
(UNSC, 2008). Furthermore, one – out of many – company,
Traxys, alone officially exported 226 tons of coltan in 2007 – or
near 57% of the entire official coltan export from the DRC ac-
cording to the Groups of experts (UNSC, 2008). Receipts and
records of the five major comptoirs buying minerals, including
coltan and cassiterite, traded minerals for an average of 9.77
USD/kg per day in May 2008 (UNSC, 2008). Summarizing
the purchases across a total accumulated period of 66 days, the
companies M.G.M, ETS Panju, MDM, Muyeye and Amur pur-
chased an average of 29.45 tons per day of an average cost of
65,127 USD (records archived at UN, New York; UNSC, 2008).
It is impossible to verify the extent of the illegal exploitation
in exact numbers. However, the taxing alone of 0.2 USD per
kg around the road systems of minerals estimated to be at
least 2–10 times higher than official exports which for coltan,
cassiterite and wolframite combined then becomes around
32,000–150,000 tons of minerals annually, suggesting an in-
come of near 6–30 million USD alone on road taxes on miner-
als to the militias, around 4 million USD on charcoal, and most
likely similar for other goods combined. In addition gold and
diamonds are also involved. With taxes also on trucks, other
goods like cement, timber and charcoal, charcoal reported to be
at least 0.7 million USD alone at some border crossings in ad-
dition, not including the transport inside the DRC, suggest that
the militias are making an income of anywhere between 14–50
million USD annually on taxes alone, most likely much more.
In addition, the militias are heavily involved also in the fronts
and in many of the actual local companies or fronts based in
among other Kampala and Nairobi (UNSC, 2008). It is there-
fore clear that the militias and subsidiary companies involved