Activists
claimed on Monday that a Swiss company laundered gold ore pillaged by an
illegal armed group from conflict-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.
Argor-Heraeus
is believed to have refined almost three tonnes of gold ore pillaged from the
country between 2004 and 2005, according to Track Impunity Always, or TRIAL, an
organisation dedicated to ensuring that perpetrators of international crimes
are held accountable.
Pillaging
is considered a war crime, stressed TRIAL.
The NGO
said it had filed a criminal complaint against Argor-Heraeus, and that the
Swiss federal prosecutor's office had responded Monday by opening a probe into
the company for "complicity in war crimes and pillage".
The company
knew, or should have assumed, that the gold which passed through Uganda had
been obtained through pillage in DR Congo, the group said.
Argor-Heraeus,
one of the world's largest processors of precious metals, strongly rejected the
allegations. In a statement it said the firm had already been cleared of
similar suspicions by two Swiss and one UN investigations.
"Eight
years after the conclusion of the case, the allegation arrives like a bolt from
the blue for Argor-Heraeus," the company said.
TRIAL
claims that the gold in question was illegally mined by a group called the
National Integrationist Front (FNI), which financed its operations through
trafficking in gold.
The FNI was
created with Ugandan support and in 2003 took control of a mineral-rich area in
the conflict-ravaged northeastern Ituri region of the DR Congo.
The gold
"was mined in appalling conditions" before being sold in Uganda by a
Congolese gold trader and air transport company owner called Kisoni Kambale,
TRIAL said.
Kambale in
turn resold the gold to a Kampala-based company called Uganda Commercial Impex
Limited (UCI). They then sold it on to British Hussar Limited, based in the
Channel Islands.
The gold
was initially refined by South Africa's Rand Refinery, but that company stopped
working with Hussar in mid-2004 "because it suspected the gold had been
acquired illegally," TRIAL said.
That's when
Argor-Heraeus entered the scene, refining nearly three tonnes of the gold into
ingots from July 2004 through May 2005, according to TRIAL.
"By
turning this illegally obtained gold into ingots, Argor-Heraeus made it
impossible to identify the criminal origin of the gold," TRIAL charged.
The Swiss
firm stressed Monday that in 2005 it had "decided not to accept any
material for processing in its plant from Uganda and instable regions and to
cease any commercial activity with Hussar".
Such a move
was too little too late, said TRIAL, stressing the DR Congo conflict and
illegal gold trade had been going on for years.
A 2004 UN
report documented Hussar and UCI's role in the pillage, and recommended sanctions
against Argor-Heraeus, claiming they were supporting the FNI and thus violating
a UN arms embargo.
However,
the UN did not impose sanctions on the Swiss company.
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