Apple is accused of profiting from war crimes in Congo
The tech giant, whose major suppliers purchase minerals from Rwanda, could face an epic legal battle
Judi Rever / December 21, 2024 / CANADIAN DIMENSION
By every subjective measure, Apple is one of the most successful public companies in history. Its brand perception is synonymous with innovation and its corporate ethos is to make the world a safer, more equitable place. But lofty credos can often be misleading. In the Great Lakes region of Africa, which is ground zero in the global supply chain for Big Tech, Apple appears to have betrayed its vision. The company stands accused of deceiving consumers, laundering Congolese minerals and profiting from war crimes, according to criminal complaints filed against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium. A team of international lawyers representing the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) claims Apple’s computers and phones are tainted by the blood of Congolese people.
The lawyers allege that Apple has commercialized illegally exploited minerals, and that its key suppliers buy minerals laundered by Rwanda, an apex predator in Congo and a preferred international hub for mineral exports. Apple has long claimed it verifies the origin of minerals it uses to manufacture its products, insisting that the tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold (known as 3TG) from its suppliers are conflict-free and do not finance war. But over the course of decades, the biggest international smelters, refiners and electronic component producers have steadily purchased minerals from Rwanda, knowing full well that Rwanda’s illegal exploitation and trafficking of those minerals have been the fuel for a decades-long conflict that has ripped Congo apart and left millions of people dead.
Rwanda’s own mineral production is verifiably poor, yet many of the world’s leading processing companies buy minerals from Rwanda, in particular tantalum, a crucial metal used in aerospace components and weapons systems. Chinese companies, for instance, are big importers of tantalum from Rwanda, having locked in low prices with Rwanda’s regime many years ago. Among the global companies that buy tantalum from Rwanda are Global Advanced Metals, AVX Kyocera, Kemet/Yageo, Mitsui Mining and Smelting, Ningxia Orient Tantalum Industry, Jiujang Tanbre, Jiujiang JinXin Nonferrous Metals, Ximei Resources, Ulba Metallurgical Plant and Taniobis—all of which are listed as Apple’s suppliers on the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The suppliers sourcing from Rwanda are listed by an industry-led certification scheme that Apple has relied on for years, known as ITSCI. The trail of evidence linking international buyers to Rwanda is therefore available for everyone to see.
Earlier this year, Rwandan President Paul Kagame admitted that Rwanda is a transit hub for smuggled Congolese minerals and suggested that the international community was entirely complicit in the global supply chain fraud. He said it’s never been a secret that Congolese minerals go through Rwanda to Brussels, Tel Aviv, Russia and Dubai, among other places.
Congo’s government meanwhile estimates that it’s losing an estimated $1 billion a year in minerals that are being trafficked into Rwanda. At the same time, Rwandan soldiers and its proxy M23 militia have made important territorial gains in Congo’s eastern mineral-rich provinces. Rwanda is now expanding its influence and mining revenues as its proxies displace, rape and kill Congolese civilians with astonishing levels of impunity.
The unsavory subtext to this tragedy is Kagame’s close ties to the West, in particular the US, UK, Canada, and France, whose economies are highly dependent on critical minerals from Central Africa and the Sahel. Rwandan troops are the West’s hired guns in the Sahel so there seems little chance that Rwanda will be slapped with UN or US sanctions for its latest crime spree. In the face of mounting military losses, Congo’s options are dwindling; its embattled President Etienne Tshisekedi appears to have had no choice but to bring in the lawyers.
“Color Apple red, and not green. It is a trillion-dollar company that must be assumed to know the consequences of its actions. Enough with denials of accountability and hiding behind the false narrative of supply chain defenses!” said Robert Amsterdam, whose Washington-based firm has taken up the case, alongside William Bourdon & Associés in Paris, and Christophe Marchand of Jus Cogens in Brussels.
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Coltan mining near Rubaya in eastern Congo.
Photo by Sylvain Liechti/Wikimedia Commons.
“Apple is also accused of using deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers that the tech giant’s supply chains are clean,” Amsterdam announced this week, warning that the criminal complaints against Apple were “the first salvo” of judicial actions expected from the legal team.
Apple immediately refuted the allegations and said it has told its suppliers to stop buying minerals sourced from Congo and Rwanda. “As conflict in the region escalated earlier this year, we notified our suppliers that their smelters and refiners must suspend sourcing tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold from the DRC and Rwanda,” Apple said.
Congo’s team of lawyers welcomed the announcement but said Apple’s statement would have to be verified on the ground and that in any case, French and Belgian judges would have to rule on the matter. “Apple’s statements do not change the past and the crimes that are alleged to have been committed,” the lawyers said.
The French and Belgian complaints have not been released publicly but were shared with several journalists, including me. The legal filings say that Apple’s director of supplier responsibility, Ashley Orbach, used to work for the US State Department and would have had detailed knowledge of the illicit trade of minerals in Central Africa. In fact, in 2014, Orbach was on the front line of efforts by the State Department to provide guidance to companies on exercising due diligence in the global supply chain. She was among the two most prominent officials working for the US government on conflict minerals.
Orbach, who joined Apple in 2017, has publicly stated: “We care as much about how products are made as the products we make. We have both the responsibility and an opportunity to operate in a responsible manner that not only doesn’t do harm but also does good. Ultimately, if suppliers are unwilling or unable to meet our strict standards they will be removed from the supply chain.”
The lawyers allege that Apple had full knowledge of the breaches in its supply chain and did not denounce these violations or suspend any of its major suppliers. The complaints say the illegal transfer of Congolese minerals to Rwanda has been documented for years by UN investigators and NGOs such as Global Witness.
It’s worth noting that the Congolese government has not sued Apple yet. The French and Belgian legal complaints are a first step in that direction, though, and would need to be approved by judges. The complaints were filed against Apple subsidiaries instead of its head office in California because criminal laws in France and Belgium are more receptive to universal jurisdiction and rulings on war crimes.
Western and Asian companies are rarely found legally accountable for committing human rights violations in Africa, a continent that has endured resource plundering by multinationals since time immemorial. Corporate accountability for international crimes is slowly becoming a matter for the courts, however.
Ultimately, the case against Apple will hinge on whether lawyers can demonstrate that the company has had reasonable grounds to suspect that in purchasing materials from mineral processors doing business with Rwanda, it has in fact acquired, used, possessed and profited from criminal property—and is thus criminally liable. This will likely require a detailed trail of how electronic and component capacitor makers, in addition to smelters and refiners that Apple relies on, have paid Rwanda for illicit goods, which are then sold as ‘clean’ minerals to Apple and other companies.
For more than 25 years, Rwanda has used an international network of elites to help smuggle, sell and profit from Congolese minerals that are transported along militarized, violent trade routes. In 2008, Rwanda was exporting more than 4.6 times than what it produced, according to the US Geological Survey.
Other tech giants such as Intel, Sony, Motorola, and Tesla, in addition to defense manufacturers such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, use suppliers that source from Rwanda. It seems that Apple is being targeted here because of its perceived reputation for corporate responsibility, its consumer appeal and its deep pockets.
In the near term, it’s not clear how Apple and other companies would acquire sufficient quantities of tantalum to manufacture their devices if their suppliers stopped sourcing from Congo. Australia has substantive reserves of tantalum, but due to high extraction costs it has not been a major producer of the mineral for years. Brazil is the world’s second biggest producer but does not have enough capacity to replace quantities that Congo and Rwanda now provide to downstream buyers. Industry insiders know that Central Africa is the go-to source for a cheap, steady supply of strategic minerals that are essential to the global economy.
There is a risk here, as well, that ill-conceived legal moves could lead to a de facto embargo on 3TG minerals from Congo and risk further impoverishing Congolese miners and their families. Instead of punishing the Congolese, the focus should be on ending Rwanda’s chokehold in eastern Congo, once and for all. Governments should declare an embargo on Rwandan mineral exports, and prevent suppliers in the global supply chain from buying laundered goods. At the same time, the United Nations should fully dismantle its expensive, ineffective peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, and resurrect an intervention brigade to remove Rwandan troops and their militia from Congolese soil, as it did in 2013 when Rwanda’s M23 rebels were chased out of their strongholds. The UN forces could then be used to protect Congo’s most lucrative mines from the endless cycle of exploitation, trafficking and violence associated with the illicit trade.
After nearly 30 years of justifying Rwandan crimes in Congo, the international community must remove Kagame’s incentive to stoke war so that the Congolese can finally work toward achieving political and economic sovereignty.
Judi Rever is a journalist from Montréal and is the author of In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
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“Apple is also accused of using deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers that the tech giant’s supply chains are clean,” Amsterdam announced this week, warning that the criminal complaints against Apple were “the first salvo” of judicial actions expected from the legal team.
Apple immediately refuted the allegations and said it has told its suppliers to stop buying minerals sourced from Congo and Rwanda. “As conflict in the region escalated earlier this year, we notified our suppliers that their smelters and refiners must suspend sourcing tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold from the DRC and Rwanda,” Apple said.
Congo’s team of lawyers welcomed the announcement but said Apple’s statement would have to be verified on the ground and that in any case, French and Belgian judges would have to rule on the matter. “Apple’s statements do not change the past and the crimes that are alleged to have been committed,” the lawyers said.
The French and Belgian complaints have not been released publicly but were shared with several journalists, including me. The legal filings say that Apple’s director of supplier responsibility, Ashley Orbach, used to work for the US State Department and would have had detailed knowledge of the illicit trade of minerals in Central Africa. In fact, in 2014, Orbach was on the front line of efforts by the State Department to provide guidance to companies on exercising due diligence in the global supply chain. She was among the two most prominent officials working for the US government on conflict minerals.
Orbach, who joined Apple in 2017, has publicly stated: “We care as much about how products are made as the products we make. We have both the responsibility and an opportunity to operate in a responsible manner that not only doesn’t do harm but also does good. Ultimately, if suppliers are unwilling or unable to meet our strict standards they will be removed from the supply chain.”
The lawyers allege that Apple had full knowledge of the breaches in its supply chain and did not denounce these violations or suspend any of its major suppliers. The complaints say the illegal transfer of Congolese minerals to Rwanda has been documented for years by UN investigators and NGOs such as Global Witness.
It’s worth noting that the Congolese government has not sued Apple yet. The French and Belgian legal complaints are a first step in that direction, though, and would need to be approved by judges. The complaints were filed against Apple subsidiaries instead of its head office in California because criminal laws in France and Belgium are more receptive to universal jurisdiction and rulings on war crimes.
Western and Asian companies are rarely found legally accountable for committing human rights violations in Africa, a continent that has endured resource plundering by multinationals since time immemorial. Corporate accountability for international crimes is slowly becoming a matter for the courts, however.
Ultimately, the case against Apple will hinge on whether lawyers can demonstrate that the company has had reasonable grounds to suspect that in purchasing materials from mineral processors doing business with Rwanda, it has in fact acquired, used, possessed and profited from criminal property—and is thus criminally liable. This will likely require a detailed trail of how electronic and component capacitor makers, in addition to smelters and refiners that Apple relies on, have paid Rwanda for illicit goods, which are then sold as ‘clean’ minerals to Apple and other companies.
For more than 25 years, Rwanda has used an international network of elites to help smuggle, sell and profit from Congolese minerals that are transported along militarized, violent trade routes. In 2008, Rwanda was exporting more than 4.6 times than what it produced, according to the US Geological Survey.
Other tech giants such as Intel, Sony, Motorola, and Tesla, in addition to defense manufacturers such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, use suppliers that source from Rwanda. It seems that Apple is being targeted here because of its perceived reputation for corporate responsibility, its consumer appeal and its deep pockets.
In the near term, it’s not clear how Apple and other companies would acquire sufficient quantities of tantalum to manufacture their devices if their suppliers stopped sourcing from Congo. Australia has substantive reserves of tantalum, but due to high extraction costs it has not been a major producer of the mineral for years. Brazil is the world’s second biggest producer but does not have enough capacity to replace quantities that Congo and Rwanda now provide to downstream buyers. Industry insiders know that Central Africa is the go-to source for a cheap, steady supply of strategic minerals that are essential to the global economy.
There is a risk here, as well, that ill-conceived legal moves could lead to a de facto embargo on 3TG minerals from Congo and risk further impoverishing Congolese miners and their families. Instead of punishing the Congolese, the focus should be on ending Rwanda’s chokehold in eastern Congo, once and for all. Governments should declare an embargo on Rwandan mineral exports, and prevent suppliers in the global supply chain from buying laundered goods. At the same time, the United Nations should fully dismantle its expensive, ineffective peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, and resurrect an intervention brigade to remove Rwandan troops and their militia from Congolese soil, as it did in 2013 when Rwanda’s M23 rebels were chased out of their strongholds. The UN forces could then be used to protect Congo’s most lucrative mines from the endless cycle of exploitation, trafficking and violence associated with the illicit trade.
After nearly 30 years of justifying Rwandan crimes in Congo, the international community must remove Kagame’s incentive to stoke war so that the Congolese can finally work toward achieving political and economic sovereignty.
Judi Rever is a journalist from Montréal and is the author of In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
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