South Africa’s largest gold-miner, AngloGold Ashanti, ”messed up” when its employees in a north-eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) paid about $9 000 (R61 800) in bribes to the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), the group’s CEO, Bobby Godsell, said on Wednesday.
Godsell was speaking at a media conference called to respond to allegations made against AngloGold Ashanti in a report released on Wednesday by New York-headquartered watchdog Human Rights Watch.
In April 2004, South Africa’s AngloGold and Ghana’s Ashanti Goldfields merged to form AngloGold Ashanti.
The payment was apparently made to protect staff.
”We saw a group of people coming with AK-47s and demanding $8 000 as real and present danger and reacted to it,” Godsell told a hastily convened press conference in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
He said as soon as the company’s management in Johannesburg was told about it, it notified the DRC transitional government, withdrew from the area and only returned when the security situation improved and the United Nations mission in the DRC moved in.
”If it comes to the judgement that our people can only stay there by payment of bribes, then we will withdraw,” Godsell said.
”Going forward, we will not give financial support,” he said.
Earlier, corporate affairs executive Steve Lenahan read a statement admitting that the company had paid $8 000, as well as further sums totalling about $1 000 for an ”unauthorised arrangement” relating to a cargo delivery, but said: ”In respect of the payments, we repeat that this will not reoccur.”
The group was responding to a report by Human Rights Watch titled The Curse of Gold, which documents how local armed groups fighting for control of gold mines use profits from gold-mining to fund their activities and buy weapons.
Human Rights Watch says the gold is smuggled out of the DRC to neighbouring Uganda, where it is ”legitimised” and sent to Europe, with the local communities not benefiting.
Uganda’s own output cannot account for the amounts it exported, Human Rights Watch said.
Although the company had been dealing with the DRC’s transitional government in relation to its exploratory activities in the potentially lucrative ”Concession 40” in Mongbwalu, it was the rebel FNI and its leader, Floribert Njabu, who had real control of the area, Human Rights Watch wrote.
The group has committed a number of atrocities, including rape and murder, while gaining control in the first half of 2003, it said.
”The Kinshasa government does not control Mongbwalu … it is very clear that in order to get access to the concession, AngloGold Ashanti needed to have contact with the armed group to access the concession,” report researcher Anneke van Woudenberg told an earlier press briefing.
The report documents a number of meetings between AngloGold Ashanti employees and the FNI and quotes Njabu as saying that the group would only be able to operate in the area with his permission.
It believes that by entering into a relationship with the FNI, AngloGold Ashanti delivered material benefits and prestige to the FNI.
”These resources could in turn by used to further FNI control over the area and help in resisting efforts by the transitional government, the UN and other actors to end violence and human rights abuses in Ituri,” the report said.
It said that while this might be against companies’ official policies, what happens ”on the ground” is important.
According to Human Rights Watch, FNI supporters lived in AngloGold Ashanti-owned houses and were offered lifts on company flights.
Godsell denied that the company met with the FNI ”at any stage”.
”We have at no stage sought their blessing, support or authority of any kind in the area.”
He said the company entered the area after advice from the transitional government and Monuc and felt its presence would contribute to the country’s peace process.
It paid $1,5-million per year in lease payments for the right to look for minerals in the country. Once discovered, the minerals would be taxed by the Kinshasa government.
The company has withdrawn once before since first getting the concession in 1996, due to the outbreak of civil war in 1998.
Godsell said because disarmed FNI supporters lived near the camp, ”we can’t obviously say there will never be any contact”.
Later, Lenahan said that Njabu had lived in a house owned by the company before being placed under house arrest in Kinshasa.
He said that in the light of the earlier $8 000 demand, he did not ask Njabu to leave.
”I made the judgement that insisting that a rebel leader leave this house would be ill-advised,” he said.
DRC neighbour Angola is slowly emerging from a protracted civil war supported by the illegal trade in diamonds. The ”Kimberley Process” certification process hopes to curb the movement of ”blood diamonds” in the future.
No similar process exists for gold mined from conflict areas, Human Rights Watch said.
”There will be no peace in the Congo unless the issue of natural resource exploitation has been dealt with,” Van Woudenberg said. — Sapa