DRCongo: Golden Corruption - Ctrl.Alt.Shift

This is a follow-up piece I did for Ctrl.Alt.Shift regarding the 40 TONNES OF GOLD (you heard right) being illegally smuggled out of the DRCongo by sanction busters. It is a piece I felt I had to write, even at 2am in the morning when I got the news; having visited the DRC in 2008, and fell in admiration of the people and the country. The African nation (like many others on the continent) is rich, in resources and spirit - and something needs to be done to prevent it continuing to tumble down the poverty line due to scummy, unjust exploiters of the good, honest and struggling Congolese people. Here's the report:

Editor’s Blog - DRCongo Down By 40 Tonnes Of Gold
What good is a rule, if it is broken without consequence for the perpetrators? I’m talking about the sanction busters found to be smuggling 40 tonnes of gold annually out the Democratic Republic of Congo - I’ve had a pretty hefty 18 carat gold chain around my neck since I was 16 years young… 40 tonnes is a volume I can’t even begin to comprehend.



The announcement was made this week by United Nations official Dino Mahtani to the BBC, who stated the tonnes of gold have been controlled by rebel groups in the DRC to buy arms. Mahtani said: "A lot of this gold is controlled by armed group networks, in particular the FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda), the Rwandan-based rebel group partly composed by members involved in the 1994 genocide and who continue to operate in eastern Congo."



As if DRC didn’t have enough problems – having been ravaged through an African civil war since 1994, rinsed of its resources in the process. Losing $1.24billion (£739million) worth of gold on a yearly basis, without any customs declaration, is just further clog to the DRC system. Illicit trade is one of the prime reasons why one of the most richly-resourced nations in the world remains a developing one...

Read the full article here