The DRC’s Historic Case Against Apple Over Blood Minerals in Its Supply Chain

The war-torn country has accused the US-based global tech giant of war crimes, forgery and deception by using illegally extracted and smuggled minerals in its products.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has filed criminal cases against Apple, accusing the US-based global tech giant of fueling the war against the country’s eastern region by using in its products what have been deemed “blood minerals”.

“Year after year, Apple has sold technology made with minerals sourced from a region whose population is being devastated by grave violations of human rights,” maintains Robert Amsterdam, founding partner of Amsterdam & Partners LLP.

The Washington DC-based law firm was retained by DRC’s government late last year to investigate supply chains for illegally extracted and siphoned minerals from Congo, especially the 3Ts—tin, tungsten, and tantalum—that are critical for the electronics, automotive, and aerospace industries.

Of the 32 smelters and refiners listed by Apple as its suppliers of tantalum in its report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for 2023, at least nine source the mineral from Rwanda. But “Rwanda’s production of key 3T minerals is near zero,” the law firm said in a report it published in April 2024, titled “Blood Minerals – The Laundering of DRC’s 3T Minerals by Rwanda and Private Entities.”

Tantalum is a rare earth metal extracted from coltan, 64% of whose global deposit is in the DRC. Most of it is concentrated in Rubaya, a mining town in North Kivu province which produces over 15% of the global supply of tantalum. By the end of April, it was taken over by the Rwandan army-backed militia, the M23.

Since then, the M23 has been generating USD 300,000 in monthly revenue from Rubaya’s coltan mines, Bintou Keita, head of the UN mission in Congo, told the Security Council on September 30. “The criminal laundering of the DRC’s natural resources smuggled out of the country is strengthening armed groups.”

Wracked by the decades-long conflict that has displaced over 7 million people, there are reportedly over a hundred armed groups fighting to capitalize on the mineral-rich eastern region of the country along the border with Rwanda. M23, one of the most powerful and notorious of these armed groups, began the current offensive to control the mineral wealth in Kivu provinces in late 2021.

In 2022, Rwanda sold a billion dollars worth of 3T minerals and gold, collectively known as 3TG, despite having little deposits in its own territory. “It’s all coming from DRC — that’s obvious,” Congo’s finance minister Nicolas Kazadi told the FT in March 2023. By June of that year, UN experts reported that the M23 and the Rwandan army had together taken control of all the main routes for the transport of these minerals, including the roads to Rwanda and Uganda.

By March 2024, the duo encircled Goma, cutting off North Kivu’s capital from all road access except to Rwanda, before seizing Rubaya in April. Several other towns in the province have also fallen to their control since, including Matembe on December 16. Inroads into the province of South Kivu have also been reported.

“Today, the DRC government lacks meaningful control of the mineral-rich…Kivu provinces. It is Rwanda, directly or indirectly, that exercises control there,” the Blood Minerals report states. On its campaign trail marauding for DRC’s minerals, the Rwandan proxy has killed and raped hundreds of civilians, and displaced over a million more people, adding to the seven million already displaced.

Big Tech assertion of clean supply chain is “patently untrue”
“Big tech companies such as Apple and Intel regularly send their due diligence teams into Rwanda and come away making bold assertions…that the products are made with conflict-free minerals. Their assertions are patently untrue.”

Apple has been making this claim since 2014. However, the report added, Apple’s human rights and sustainability efforts manager had been informed by whistleblowers that smelters and refiners in its supply chain were sourcing tantalum from Rwanda’s Minerals Supply Africa (MSA), a company known to be laundering large quantities of the mineral smuggled from DRC.

Days before releasing this report, on April 22, a group of lawyers led by Amsterdam and William Bourdon, founder of a Paris-based law firm also retained by the DRC government, had demanded responses to a set of questions from Apple CEO Tim Cook and its French subsidiaries.

“The absence of a response is an implicit admission that the questions we asked Apple were relevant,” Bourdon said on May 22, after the passing of the three-week deadline they had given the company to respond.

“In recent weeks, since the release of the Blood Minerals report, we have received new evidence from whistleblowers,” Amsterdam added. “It is more urgent than ever that Apple provide real answers to the very serious questions we have raised, as we evaluate our legal options.”

On September 27, the launch day of iPhone 16, protests against Apple’s sourcing of minerals extracted from areas controlled by armed groups in the DRC were held outside Apple stores in several cities globally. These included England’s capital London and other British cities including Bristol, Reading and Cardiff, Netherlands’ capital Amsterdam, Belgium’s capital Brussels, Japan’s capital Tokyo, Canada’s Montreal, South Africa’s Cape Town, and Mexico City.

On December 16, DRC’s lawyers filed a lawsuit against Apple in France, followed by another in Belgium on December 17.

“As of December 31, 2023 — for the ninth consecutive year — 100 percent of the identified smelters and refiners in our supply chain for all applicable Apple products manufactured during 2023 participated in an independent third-party conflict minerals audit for 3TG,” Apple said in its SEC filing.

“Based on our due diligence efforts, including analyzing the information provided by third-party audit programs… we found no reasonable basis for concluding that any of the smelters or refiners… in our supply chain” have “directly or indirectly” benefited any of the militias ravaging DRC.

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A global mechanism to launder DRC’s blood minerals across the supply chains?
The International Tin Supply Chain Initiative (ITSCI) is among the main providers of the “third-party audit programs” Apple has been citing to back its assertion that its supply chains are not contaminated by ‘blood minerals’.

Set up by the industry giants in 2009, the OECD authenticated ITSCI as fully aligned with its own due diligence guidelines in 2018. By tagging sealed bags of minerals going from mines to smelters, ITSCI claims to have put in place a system of traceability.

On the one hand, this is supposed to ensure that only minerals mined from the government-approved areas of the DRC are certified by ITSCI. On the other, it is meant to guarantee that 3T minerals exported from Rwanda have not been smuggled in from the DRC by armed groups.

MONUSCO patrol in Munigi, North Kivu on December 3, 2024 in a displaced persons camp. Photo: MONUSCO/Aubin Mukoni

Global Witness produced a report in April 2022 titled The ITSCI Laundromat which investigates this “due diligence scheme”. It alleges that “only about 10%” of the minerals that Rwanda “exported were actually extracted [within the country]… the rest being smuggled from DRC.”

“While ITSCI has taken action against some minor incidents of mineral smuggling, large companies that have exported the bulk of the smuggled minerals were reportedly left alone. The most important of these companies was Minerals Supply Africa (MSA),” according to the report.

UN experts have also shown that the minerals extracted from areas under the control of armed groups have entered the ITSCI-certified supply chain year after year. In 2022, the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), of which Apple is a member, also removed ITSCI from its list of reliable monitors of conflict minerals. Nevertheless, Apple continued citing ITSCI, including in its 2023 SEC filing.

“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,” Amsterdam said on December 17.

The allegations reportedly include covering up war crimes, laundering smuggled minerals, forgery and deceptive practices to convince its consumers that its products are free of conflict minerals.

“We strongly dispute these claims,” Apple said in a statement issued on December 21. Without providing details, it added, “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. We took this action because we were concerned it was no longer possible for independent auditors or industry certification mechanisms to perform the due diligence required to meet our high standards.”

Pointing out that these claims about the changes Apple has made to its supply chain need to be verified on the ground, DRC’s lawyers have said they will continue to pursue the cases filed against the company.

EU’s deal with Rwanda is also stained with Congolese blood
Describing these simultaneous criminal complaints as “an unprecedented dual judicial initiative”, Bourdon said it was the “first step towards making one of the biggest players in tech accountable for its policy of endless enrichment at the cost of the most serious of crimes staining African supply chains.”

Calling it the “first salvo”, Amsterdam hinted at future lawsuits against other companies. Intel, Sony, Motorola and the US-based weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin are also mentioned in the Blood Minerals report. “Apple is undoubtedly one of the most symbolic targets, due to its financial strength and its unbridled communication on the theme ‘We are doing good for the planet,’” he said.

The lawyers also wrote to European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen to inform her of the cases and to call on her to open a dialogue on the accountability of the European Union (EU).

Earlier this year on February 19, as Rwanda was consolidating control over the mining areas of DRC’s North Kivu and the cross-border transport routes from the mines in this region to Rwanda, the EU entered into an agreement with the country “to nurture sustainable and resilient value chains for critical raw materials.”

“For the EU, this partnership will contribute to ensuring a sustainable supply of raw materials, especially critical raw materials, as an essential prerequisite for delivering on green and clean energy objectives,” its press release explained.

It described Rwanda as “a major player on the world’s tantalum extraction. It also produces tin, tungsten, gold and niobium, and has potential for lithium and rare earth elements. In addition, Rwanda with its favorable investment climate and rule of law can become a hub for value addition in the mineral sector.”

Rwanda “doesn’t even have a gram of these so-called ‘critical’ minerals in its subsoil”, retorted DRC’s president Tshisekedi. “Rwanda doesn’t even process them… [I]t exports them and gets dividends from that, on the blood of our compatriots.”

Condemning the agreement with Rwanda as a “provocation of very, very bad taste”, he said that the EU was encouraging the looting of DRC by Rwanda.

“But most of” the minerals coming in from the DRC “does not stay here” but “goes through here” to West Asia and Europe, said Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame in a recent statement, implying Rwanda is not alone in “stealing minerals of Congo”. Europe too will be tainted by the same allegation if Rwanda is to be held accountable.

(Peoples Dispatch)