Global Witness welcomes the US sanctions against the armed group PARECO-FF and three companies – the Cooperative des Artisanaux Miniers du Congo (CDMC), East Rise Corporation Limited (East Rise) and Star Dragon Corporation Limited (Star Dragon) – which have traded minerals sourced from PARECO-FF, according to the statement
The sanctions come following long-standing investigations by Global Witness into these companies.
Between late 2022 and April 2024, PARECO-FF profited from minerals from the Rubaya area in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where around 15% of the world’s coltan is produced.
In 2022, Global Witness reported that the three now sanctioned companies were connected to John Crawley, a British businessman and his long-time Swiss business partner Chris Huber. (Huber denied having connections to the three companies and Crawley denied any connection to CDMC and Star Dragon.)
Crawley and Huber have been key figures in the coltan trade for well over a decade – and have been repeatedly accused of buying conflict minerals in the DRC and Rwanda.
Global Witness has investigated how CDMC apparently bought coltan connected to violence and sold it to Star Dragon.
Evidence suggests that this coltan was smuggled across concessions and then laundered by the ITSCI traceability scheme, when Crawley was CDMC’s chairman and also president of TIC, one of the two associations running ITSCI (CDMC has denied having bought trafficked minerals; ITSCI has denied that its scheme was used to launder trafficked minerals, and Crawley has denied that he has any connection to CDMC).
Chris Huber bought smuggled minerals from DRC through three Rwandan companies between 2012 and 2017 and sold it to East Rise, evidence from the same report suggests (Huber denies this).
Yet, allegations of conflict minerals trade against both Crawley and Huber go much further back. In 2018, a criminal investigation was launched against Huber in Switzerland for "suspected pillage" in DRC, a war crime under Swiss law.
According to the NGOs TRIAL International and the Open Society Justice Initiative, which filed the complaint, one of Huber’s companies was granted four mining concessions by RCD-Goma, a Rwandan-backed rebel movement that controlled large parts of eastern DRC and massacred thousands between 1998 and 2003.
Furthermore, in 2009 the UN Group of Experts on DRC reported that Huber had that year purchased minerals originating from DRC mines occupied by armed forces and that two companies connected to Crawley and Huber also bought conflict minerals from DRC. (Crawley has denied a connection to one of the two companies).
In late April 2024, M23, a Rwandan-supported armed group, took over control of the Rubaya mines from PARECO-FF, the newly US-sanctioned entity. M23 has been sanctioned by the US since 2013. However, no companies buying minerals linked to M23 have yet been sanctioned by the US.
In April 2025, Global Witness published evidence suggesting that the Rwandan company African Panther Resources bought conflict minerals connected to M23 that were then sold to Traxys, headquartered in Luxembourg. In July, the UN Group of Experts on DRC reported that the Rwandan exporter Boss Mining Solutions also bought conflict minerals from Rubaya.
Global Witness calls on the US and other governments to sanction companies buying conflict coltan connected to armed groups in the African Great Lakes Region.
