Washington’s decision follows a month after the emergence of leaked bank documents purporting to show how Gertler’s companies in the DRC had worked around what are meant to be the US’s most punitive sanctions.
The US treasury department first sanctioned Gertler in 2017, accusing him of amassing his fortune “through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals” in the DRC. The country had lost more than $1.3bn from these deals, according to the US treasury.
Reverse course
On 8 March, President Joe Biden’s administration reversed a decision made secretly in the dying days of Donald Trump’s presidency to give Gertler a license for a year suspending the Magnitsky Act sanctions, which had barred him and his businesses from using US dollars and froze all his dollar holdings in the US.
Insiders say that outgoing treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin and outgoing
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