Paris, France

The Central African giant versus the tech giant: the Congolese government has filed a complaint in France and Belgium against subsidiaries of the Apple group, accused of using minerals “illegally exploited” in the DRC in its products.

For several months, the Democratic Republic of Congo has accused the Apple brand of buying minerals smuggled from the country’s unstable east to neighboring Rwanda, where they are laundered and “integrated into global supply chains”.

The complaint targets these facts, as well as “deceptive commercial practices” allegedly used by Apple “to assure consumers that the tech giant’s supply chains are clean”, says a statement issued on Tuesday December 17, 2024 by lawyers Robert Amsterdam (Washington), William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth (Paris) and Christophe Marchand (Brussels).

The French complaint has been filed in Paris and targets the offenses of concealment of various crimes, including war crimes, laundering of forgery and use of forgeries, and deception.

– Endless enrichment

For Mr. Bourdon, “it is France’s duty and honor to be the first country to bring to justice the conditions under which blood minerals are mined, and the endless enrichment from which the largest companies cynically benefit”.
According to the press release, with this “first” judicial action, the DRC intends more generally to “confront the individuals and companies involved in the chain of extraction, supply and marketing of natural resources and minerals looted in the DRC.”
“The scale and duration of these activities have inflicted destruction and unfathomable suffering on the civilian population in parts of the country,” the statement goes on to say.
“These activities have fuelled a cycle of violence and conflict by financing militias and terrorist groups, and have contributed to forced child labor and environmental devastation,” the lawyers added.
In support of their complaint, the lawyers cite the work of the United Nations, the US State Department and international NGOs such as Global Witness.
They state that they have written to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to initiate a dialogue on the role the European Union could play, particularly in “holding accountable” the players involved.
– No reasonable basis” –
In April, the DRC issued a formal notice to Apple on this subject.

The multinational then referred to elements published in its 2023 annual report on conflict minerals.
This emphasized that it had “found no reasonable basis to conclude that any of the 3TG smelters or refineries (tin, tungsten, tantalum, gold) determined to be part of our supply chain as at December 31, 2023 directly or indirectly financed or benefited armed groups in the DRC or an adjoining country.”
Kigali had also rejected these accusations, calling them “a repetition of baseless allegations and conjecture, aimed at arousing media interest about one of the world’s largest companies”.
“This is just the latest move by the DRC government, which is constantly seeking to divert attention to Rwanda with false accusations,” Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo told AFP.
The mineral-rich east of the DRC has been plagued by violence since the 1990s, and tensions have worsened since the reappearance in late 2021 of the Rwandan-backed M23 rebellion, which occupies large swathes of territory in North Kivu.
The government in Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of wanting to lay its hands on the resources, particularly mining resources, of eastern Congo, one of the reasons why, in its view, Kigali supports the M23 rebellion.

Humaniterre with AFP (Guillaume Maudin)