The US Treasury Department announced on Monday the expansion of sanctions imposed on billionaire Dan Gertler, the ultra-Orthodox businessman from Bnei Brak, adopting findings from the "Congo Papers" investigative series published in The Marker, as part of cooperation with the Paris-based Platform for the Protection of Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF), the London-based Global Witness, and several media outlets around the world, including Bloomberg.
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At the center of the investigations in The Marker were documents and testimonies about the alleged systematic deposit of tens of millions of dollars and euros in cash, by associates of Gertler, at the branch of the Cameroonian bank Apriland, in Kinshasa - the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to the report, the deposits were made in the period after sanctions were imposed on Gertler himself - while bank auditors warned of an alleged violation of anti-money laundering rules.
Gertler is considered the closest ally of the Kabila family, which ruled Congo for more than two decades, until January 2019. During this period, Gertler was considered the most influential figure in the field of resource mining in the African country.
Four years ago, in December 2017, the US Treasury Department imposed severe sanctions on Gertler, one of his business partners, and a list of 19 companies linked to billionaire Habani Barki.
The order, which was expanded to include 14 additional companies in mid-2018, was based on the grounds that Gertler "exploited his close ties" with the president of Congo until 2019, Joseph Kabila, to broker what were described as "corrupt transactions" in the Congolese mining industry.
According to the investigation in The Marker, Gertler had difficulty making payments to service providers in the period after the imposition of sanctions, as banks refused to provide him with services, which made his business very difficult. As a result, starting in early 2018, Gertler's associates began arriving at the bank with amounts of up to $3 million in cash to deposit.
According to the investigation, funds were sent from some of the accounts to a number of service providers in Israel, including Gertler's lawyers, media consultants who worked with him in Israel and Britain, and non-profit organizations associated with him.
Five days before the end of the Trump administration in the US, Gertler received relief from sanctions, as part of a special "license" granted to him by the US Treasury Department in an unusual procedure, which effectively suspended the sanctions. The license was granted quietly, without being given to him publicly, but its existence was leaked, revealed in The Marker, and later published in media outlets around the world.
Two months after the new Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, took office, the special license was revoked and the sanctions were restored to full effect.
Gertler sued The Marker for NIS 9 million following the publication of the investigations. However, according to The Marker, the US Treasury Department has now adopted the findings of the investigations and expanded the sanctions.
Currently, three individuals and 43 companies are included in the sanctions list related to Gertler.
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