Glencore Xstrata helped to orchestrate the secret cut-price purchase of a stake in one of the world’s highest-grade copper mines from Africa’s poorest country.
A 50 per cent-owned Glencore subsidiary recommended that the Democratic Republic of Congo’s state mining company sold its 20 per cent stake in the Mutanda mine, which Glencore operates and part-owns, to a company linked to Dan Gertler for $120 million (£73 million) in March 2011.
Weeks later Glencore’s own flotation prospectus valued the mine at more than $3 billion, suggesting that Glencore’s subsidiary recommended that the stake was sold at a fifth of what Glencore believed it was worth. Including potential royalties attached to the state mining company’s shares, the sale was worth a seventh of the stake’s true value,