Among the entrepreneurs who thrived was Dan Gertler, an Israeli mining baron who had befriended Kabila years before he took office and secured a series of favorable deals from the government, including access to Congo’s diamond reserves — an estimated market value of $600 million — for $20 million a year.
When Kinshasa, Congo’s bustling riverfront capital, was selected to host the 2012 Francophonie summit — a gathering of dozens of world leaders — Kabila anticipated that protesters would use the global spotlight to draw attention to his regime’s failures. By 2012, Mer was a conglomerate with offices in 30 countries, mostly in Latin America and Africa. It managed event security for the Olympics in Athens, installed citywide surveillance cameras in Buenos Aires, sold data mining software to local law enforcement agencies across Mexico, and built the emergency radio network for One World Trade Center in New York City.
In March 2015, after escaping a police raid at a meeting with other anti-Kabila activists, Sylvain Saluseke was spending a cold, damp night at a safehouse in Kinshasa when his cellphone rang. The man on the line identified himself as an agent with the ANR, Saluseke said.Saluseke decided to turn himself in to protect those who were with him.
Then, in September, the government said it was indefinitely postponing the election. Demonstrators filled the streets of Kinshasa as security forces moved in. Police opened fire and distributed machetes to about 100 plainclothes mercenaries paid to disrupt the gatherings, according to findings from the United Nations. Some protesters lit fires in an attempt to block police attacks; in the chaos of the clashes, witnesses said they saw officers throw people into the flames.
Senior officials in the State Department had “sent a strong message” that Kabila had to step down, Congo’s ambassador in Washington, François Balumuene, told BuzzFeed News. “They were very strict.” There had been virtually no overlap between the consultants who assist foreign governments on political matters and those who provide them with security services — until recently. In the Trump years, security specialists began to emerge as go-betweens who advocate for policies that benefit the foreign nations employing them, blurring the line separating those paid to supply access from those paid to supply weapons and intelligence.
Excellent reporting on how to buy influence within the Trump circle to get the policy outcomes dictators desire.