An online network of bot-like accounts, media sites and X users has spread disinformation in support of a sanctioned mining tycoon and attacked civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a new investigation has found.
Israeli businessman Dan Gertler was sanctioned by the US in 2017 for amassing a fortune through “hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals in the DRC”.
At the time, the US Treasury said the Central African country had “lost over $1.36bn in revenues from the underpricing of mining assets that were sold to offshore companies linked to Gertler”. The total lost revenue could reach $3.7bn if the DRC’s government fails to review its agreements with companies linked to Gertler, according to a 2021 report by Congolese civil society coalition Le Congo N’est Pas à Vendre (The Congo Is Not For Sale).
Now, an investigation by Global Witness and shared exclusively with openDemocracy can reveal that this year, dozens of bot-like X accounts and at least ten Congolese news websites have shared misleading claims that an Israeli arbitration cleared Gertler of all corruption allegations. The X accounts also argued that the US sanctions on Gertler should be lifted, with some claiming that he had been wrongly accused.
This apparent effort to rehabilitate Gertler’s image in the DRC risks whitewashing the activities of a sanctioned actor and threatens efforts to ensure transparent and ethical sourcing of the country’s ‘transition minerals’, which are crucial for the global transition to clean energy as they are needed to produce technologies such as wind turbines and electric vehicles.
Mining is the DRC’s biggest industry, forming the backbone of its economy and accounting for nearly all its export revenue. The country supplies approximately 70% of the world’s cobalt and is the world’s second-largest copper producer, both of which are vital for manufacturing electronic devices. Human rights organisations have found evidence of widespread rights abuses in the mining of both minerals, including forced evictions, child labour, highly unsafe working conditions, poverty wages, and sexual assault.
In 2017, the US Treasury said: “Gertler has used his close friendship with DRC President Joseph Kabila to act as a middleman for mining asset sales in the DRC, requiring some multinational companies to go through Gertler to do business with the Congolese state.”
Kabila did not seek a third term at the 2018 election. His successor, Félix Tshisekedi, signed an out-of-court settlement worth $250m with Gertler’s company, Ventora Development, to end a dispute over mining and oil contracts in 2022.
At the time, DRC finance minister Nicolas Kazadi told reporters that the deal, which saw Ventora agree to give several assets back to the state, had been made possible because the company was stuck between the dispute with Congo and the US sanctions, and asked for the sanctions to be lifted.
“Because they helped deliver this result, we see the US sanctions as beneficial and salutary, helping advance our country's cause, but at the same time, if the sanctions continue, it will threaten our ability to exploit these assets,” he said.
Exoneration claims
In April 2024, Gertler was ordered to pay $85m plus interest and some assets to two former Israeli investors who had launched a civil dispute against him over payments and shares they claimed he owed them. The arbitrator rejected most of the investors’ claim for more than $1.6bn.
When Bloomberg reported on the arbitration more than a year later, in July 2025, it said Gertler used his testimony to provide details, in his own words for the first time, of payments that he made to Augustin Katumba Mwanke – a senior and trusted aide to the DRC’s former president, Joseph Kabila – and stakes in ventures that Gertler held on Katumba’s behalf.
Katumba, who was killed in a private jet crash in 2013, has been described by Reuters, the BBC and Al Jazeera as one of Kabila’s most senior advisers. He reportedly had “de facto” control over mining deals in the DRC, according to a court agreement cited in a 2017 Guardian article. In his posthumously published autobiography, Ma Vérité (My Truth), Katumba described how, between 2007 and 2008, he negotiated the “deal of the century” over a major copper and cobalt mine in the DRC run as a joint venture between the country’s state-owned company, Gecamines, and a group of Chinese companies.
While the arbitration found no “compelling evidence” that certain payments Gertler made to Katumba were bribes, it made clear that the arbitrator did not consider payments that the US Department of Justice had already described as bribes when sanctioning Gertler. It also affirmed that the private arbitration decision was only meant to settle the dispute between the parties, and that nothing in the decision was to be used by anyone other than those parties.
Although Israeli media had covered the arbitration, the Bloomberg article is believed to be the first time the decision was reported on in English. On the same day it was published, news reports claiming the decision amounted to complete exoneration of Gertler’s activity in DRC were published on two Congolese news sites, AfricaNewsRDC and Scoop RDC.
But the arbitration, which Gertler is now seeking to overturn, was a private and civil dispute between business partners, not an investigation into the legality of his activities in the DRC. It was intended to be confidential (as is typical of arbitrations) and did not have a remit to exonerate Gertler from all historic corruption and bribery allegations in the DRC, as the three Congolese media reports appeared to allege.
Other than a slightly different introductory paragraph, both articles use exactly the same wording and say they were written by AfricaNews and Scoop RDC’s respective “editorial staff”. A third identically worded article was published on another Congolese news site, Ouragan.cd, the following morning and did not name an author.
The articles, which were published in French (the DRC’s official language) and have been translated by Global Witness, said: “This is the first time that an independent and authorised legal body has reviewed all information about Gertler’s activity in Congo and concluded that no bribes were handed over and proven.”
In the same week, a total of 10 similar articles appeared on Congolese websites saying Gertler had been exonerated – claims that are in stark contrast to longstanding corruption claims against Gertler that led to the US sanctions.
Gertler has consistently denied wrongdoing. When approached for comment by Global Witness, his spokesperson said: “That judgment provides one of the most detailed examinations of our activities in the DRC and explicitly concludes that there was no evidence of corruption in our operations. The judge makes this point repeatedly, so any reporting that reflects these findings is accurate journalism, even if it does not align with your perspective.”
Asked whether Gertler or his team had procured any reporting on the case in Congolese outlets, the spokesperson said his team has “not undertaken any media campaign in the DRC regarding this issue”. They added: “The diversity of opinions on the Bloomberg arbitration article expressed by the Congolese media reflects the principle of free speech.”
They added that independent journalists in the DRC remain interested in his activities, in part due to ongoing campaigning by Le Congo N’est Pas à Vendre (CNPAV), which has long called for “justice, transparency, and the revision of an agreement [made in 2022 between the DRC and Gertler’s company] that does nothing to benefit the Congolese people”.
“In recent months, we have published two reports addressing factual inaccuracies in CNPAV’s analysis of mining asset acquisitions; however, these reports are unrelated to the arbitration case. Congolese reporting therefore reflects the views and analysis of the local media, not any coordinated effort on our part,” the spokesperson said.
Global Witness also approached all the Congolese media outlets for comment.
AfricaNewsRDC and Scoop RDC declined to respond to our questions, but said they are independent media.
Scoop RDC also sent a copy of an open letter signed by individuals from 17 other DRC-based news outlets, which called Global Witness’s approach to them for comment a “blatant attempt at intimidation” and said Global Witness was “attempting to dictate narrative and police speech”. The site also published the full email that Global Witness had sent asking for comment, including an image of a Global Witness staff member and their contact details. Several other outlets also published the image alongside specific references to the same staff member.
Infos27 declined to comment. None of the other media sites responded to our questions asking how they obtained the information reported in the near-identical stories they published, or how they had independently verified this information.
Bot-like accounts push for sanctions relief
Days after the misleading articles were published, Carbone Beni, a Congolese man who, at the time of publishing, has 155,000 followers on X and describes himself as a “pro-democracy activist”, took to the social media website to call for the US sanctions on Gertler to be lifted.
He wrote: “It is time to enhance the value of our resources and highlight our assets. The decision of the Israeli court ruling on the legality of Dan Gertler’s activities in the DRC is one more reason to lift the American sanctions for the benefit of the Congolese people.”
Global Witness has found that 40 accounts, all of which were created in February, then posted similar replies agreeing with Beni, claiming the US sanctions were unjust in light of the supposed exoneration and harmful to the DRC’s interests.
One reply said: “Every day with these sanctions, the DRC loses opportunities. The Israeli decision must push the US to act quickly to correct this injustice.”
Another said: “Depriving the DRC of resources because of unfair sanctions is immoral. The Israeli justice system is paving the way for a necessary change.”
Global Witness’s analysis of the accounts’ history suggests they are part of a coordinated campaign.
All of the accounts were created in February 2025, and all have posted on the same dates. None has an identifiable owner, with only one having a person’s face in its profile picture, which a reverse image search reveals has been taken from a fashion brand’s website.
The email addresses associated with each of the accounts also all follow the same format. Each begins with the first two letters of the account’s display name and ends with what appears to be a Gmail domain.
For example, an account under the name of Divin Yondo is associated with the email address di********@g****.***, while an account with the display name Gloria Binzala was registered under the address gl***********@g****.***. This suggests they may have been created in coordination. It is possible that the names of real people are being used without their knowledge as front identities for bot accounts.
Dozens of other accounts that were created in March, April and July also posted similar replies to Beni. Global Witness has identified these accounts as also having bot-like similarities in their behaviour and the structures of the email addresses associated with the accounts.
One group of accounts that were all created in March 2025 all posted on the same dates as the 40 accounts created in February. Several of the accounts have only one or two followers and follow Russian-language accounts. These accounts are all registered to email addresses that follow the same format. For example, the emails used to register the accounts @lotulukelela and @kasongo16738 are it********@r******.** and bh********@r******.**.
This suggests an extended and coordinated bot-like network, with sets of accounts possibly created at different intervals.
The X accounts appear to have been used not only to whitewash Gertler's activities but also to undermine Congolese civil society groups that have held Gertler to account.
Later the same day, on 16 July, the accounts targeted Jimmy Kande, the director of Plateforme de Protection des Lanceurs d'Alerte en Afrique (PPLAAF), a Senegalese non-profit that in English means ‘the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa’.
Kande had posted a statement on X calling out what he claimed was a “digital army” of “pseudo-experts” and "media relays” who had emerged to distort the facts around the arbitration.
All of the 40 accounts that were created in February 2025 that had responded to Beni also replied to Kande’s post. They used similar structure and language, such as “Gertler pays taxes, you only pay with words #TaxPayerVsWhiner” and “Gertler at least has the merit of existing, you're just a shadow #RealityVsFantasy”. (These posts have been translated from French.)
There is nothing to suggest that Carbone Beni created the X accounts or is otherwise involved in them.
Approached for comment, Beni said his views are “entirely independent, based on patriotic convictions and a rigorous analysis of developments in the Gertler case, which I have been following closely for many years”.
He explained that while he initially advocated for the sanctions against Gertler, he now believes they “have served their purpose: they have raised awareness and prompted necessary corrective measures” and that lifting them is now “a necessary condition for diversifying sources of investment, stabilizing the sector, and enabling the DRC to fully benefit from its own resources in a transparent and regulated framework”.
On the accounts that replied to his posts, Beni added: “It is naturally impossible for me to control individually who publishes, comments on, or shares specific content [on X]. My goal is not to monitor reactions, but to contribute, through my analyses and positions, to a free, open, and constructive public debate on issues of governance and national sovereignty. I cannot therefore be held responsible for the initiatives, opinions, or comments of other users on this platform.”
