Democratic Republic of the Congo
The company's Luilu copper refinery uses acid to extract the copper. For three years after taking over the mine, it continued to allow the waste acid to flow into a river. The chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, was interviewed for Panorama by John Sweeney and said 'It was impossible to remedy any way faster' Glencore said the pollution started long before the company took over the refinery and that it has now ended.
A reporter for The Guardian found children as young as ten years underground at the Tilwezembe mine, which the company had said in a 2008 prospectus that it had closed due to falling copper prices. Prices rebounded later. CEO Glasenberg said the company does not profit from child labor, and the child miners went with artisanal mining by nearby residents that Glencore was trying to prevent. But Panorama tracked a shipment of copper from the mine to Groupe Bazano plant and from that plant to a Glencore smelter in Zambia.
Glencore was also accused of acquiring illicit "conflict minerals" In a detailed letter sent to Global Witness, the company denied any wrongdoing.
Glencore acquired stakes in the Kansuki mine in Congo's southern Katanga Province in 2012. According to Global Witness, Congo's government transferred a 75% stake in Kansuki mine in secret and at vastly undervalued prices in July 2010 to a company in which Dan Gertler, who is a close friend of President Joseph Kabila, has an interest. Just a month later, in August 2010, Glencore took half the shares of the company that acquired that 75% stake, becoming the operator of the mine. Glencore is financing the entire development of the Kansuki mine, thereby carrying the costs for the other partner companies, which are associated with Mr. Gertler. Glencore said at the time "During the period when these transactions took place, Glencore had decided in general not to increase its shareholdings in DRC projects."
Glencore acquired a 50% share in SAMREF Congo SPRL in 2007, a Congolese-registered company holding 80% of the Mutanda Mine. According to Global Witness, SAMREF recommended on 1 March 2011 that Congo's state-run company Gécamines, holding the other 20% of the Mutanda Mine, sell this share to an entity also associated with Dan Gertler and went on to question the links between Glencore and Dan Gertler. Glencore has been designated operator of the Mutanda Mine. Glencore has responded a number of times to Global Witness regarding these allegations.
In March 2018, it was reported that Glencore would sell one third (13,800 tonnes) of its cobalt output to China's battery recycler GEM. 18,000 tonnes are to be sold in 2019, and 21,000 in 2020. In December 2020, the company extended the agreement with GEM to at least 2029. During the FT Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland, CEO Glasenberg stated "if cobalt falls into the hands of the Chinese, yeah you won't see EVs being produced in Europe etc." Yet, Glasenberg then said that he was prepared to sell DRC cobalt mines to China if the price was good. Concurrently, a Chinese take-over of some of the mines became a real possibility due to a legal dispute about royalty payments to Gertler and Gécamines.
The DRC supplies 60% of the world's cobalt ore, while China produces more than 80% of the world's refined cobalt. In December 2018, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese battery firm GEM withdrew from its purchase contract with the commodities trader due to a price crash and oversupply of cobalt ore and recycled sources. In November 2018, export stopped due to oversupply and uranium contamination at the Kamoto Project; the company planned to fix this with a US$25 million ion-exchange refining plant.
In a June 2018 "debt-for-equity swap", Glencore's Katanga Mining agreed to a recapitalization plan involving a US$5.6 billion debt write-off and a $150 million payment to the Congolese state mining company Gécamines. According to company sources, Gertler will receive a royalty of about 25 million euros in 2018.
Later in June 2018, Glencore also announced that it had resumed paying royalties to Gertler's Ventora Development in unpaid and future royalties from the subsidiaries Mutanda Mining ($695 million) and Kamoto Copper Co ($2.28 billion). Gertler had sued Glencore in a Congolese court after payments stopped when he was sanctioned by the U.S. government in December 2017. The mines produce copper and cobalt, needed for lithium-ion batteries in mobile devices and electric vehicles. Glencore and Gertler were in a legal dispute, threatening the strategic supply of the metals and ownership of the mining entities. Glencore paid the royalties in a currency other than dollars to skirt sanctions and discussed the deal with Swiss and U.S. authorities. Glencore also settled a dispute involving the Kamoto copper and cobalt mine, but differences remain about tax and royalty payment.
In July 2018, the DRC enforced a new mining code, which forced Glencore to pay higher taxes. In response, the company began talks with the Congolese government. In August, CEO Glasberg announced that Glencore was considering legal action.
On 22 June 2021, the company reported the Mutanda mine would be reopened towards the end of 2021 and return to production in 2022. Earlier, Glencore officials discussed the re-opening of the mine with Congo's mining ministry in Kinshasa. Cobalt prospects for the company increased significantly since the inception of a long-term battery supply contract with Tesla Motors in mid-2020.
From 2007 to 2018, Glencore paid $27.5 million to third parties to bribe government officials in Congo. In December 2022, the company agreed to pay $180 million to Congo to settle the case.
