Christoph Huber, based in SA, was involved in the large-scale transport of coltan out of DRC and Rwanda when a Rwanda-backed armed group occupied much of eastern DRC during the war
A miner shows coltan in Birambo, Masisi territory, North Kivu province of Democratic Republic of Congo, in this photo taken on December 1 2018. Picture: REUTERS/GORAN TOMASEVIC/FILE PHOTO
Huber, a Swiss national based in SA, didn’t respond to multiple e-mails and calls requesting comment. He hasn’t commented publicly on the allegations or the ongoing investigation and hasn’t been charged with anything. DRC was torn apart from 1998 to 2003, when Rwanda and Uganda backed different rebel groups in efforts to depose the nation’s government. UN investigations found that the invading armies profited from the illicit extraction and sale of DRC's coltan, diamonds, gold and other minerals during the war, in which millions of people died.
About a decade ago, concerns that some traders were operating in an unregulated industry and bankrolling militias and national armies in central Africa’s Great Lakes region — which by then had become the origin of most of the world’s coltan — helped spawn the Dodd-Frank Act in the US, the largest consumer of tantalum products.
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