Special report · September 2026
The Manono Mine Stolen from AVZ
Ministers, decrees, money trails and the arbitration over the AVZ / Dathcom claim to one of the world’s largest hard-rock lithium deposits.
30
Thirty pieces of silver
PR 13359 → PE 13359
Unknown
Name / body
Antoinette N’Samba Kalambayi
Minister of Mines, April 2021–June 2024. Signed the 2022 award decrees and the 28 January 2023 cancellations. Later national deputy for Lukunga.
Name / body
Guy Loando Mboyo
Minister of State for Regional Planning from April 2021, later Relations with Parliament. Investigations report Dathomir was about 20 per cent owned by Loando and family. Former AVZ board nominee of Dathomir.
Name / body
Célestin Kibeya Kabemba / Cominière SA
Director-general of the state miner since 2022 (technical director from 2014). Signed Cominière’s reply to Resource Matters. Original 25 per cent of Dathcom; sold 15 per cent to a Zijin subsidiary for a declared US$33.44 million. IGF later valued those shares near US$154 million. ICC 10 March 2025: €39.1 million plus interest for breaching emergency orders.
Name / body
Jean-Félix Mupande / CAMI
Former head of the mining cadastre. CAMI registers titles and collects surface fees. Family holdings in mining JVs are legal under Congolese law. CAMI executed the Kalemie re-registration and later the PR 4029 forfeiture.
Name / body
Cong Maohuai (“Simon Cong”) / Dathomir
Original private majority partner with Cominière. Sold down to AVZ. Global Witness and ZAM associate the Dathomir circle with up to about US$28 million from permit-carousel style deals. ICC 2025 confirmed AVZ’s 2020 SPA for a 10 per cent slice.
Name / body
Zijin / Jinxiang / Manono Lithium SAS
Authorised to work the north from October 2023. Production and first exports reported in 2026. Source of a US$70 million “humanitarian” pledge routed via NGO Le Bouclier.
Name / body
Me Christian Lukusa / Momentum Attorneys
Judicial escrow holder for about US$20 million (Kinshasa commercial court, 2021). AVZI’s later lawyers (Matadi Nenga, letter MF/MA/185/2024) accused him of breach of trust and forgery. EcoNews RDC: he “vanished with US$20 million”. He denied it on Mines.cd (20 Oct 2024). AfroNews24 (June 2026) says neither he nor Rawbank will confirm the money is still there. Not a conviction.
Name / body
NGO Le Bouclier / Jean-David E’Ngazi
Channel for the US$70 million pledge. Reporting describes leadership sitting on or close to the Cominière board — a conflict of interest — and a weak public audit trail on part of the sum. Congolese social-media posts in March 2026 reported he had died; no official obituary located.
Thirty pieces of silver — a religious frame for a contested public asset, not a finding of guilt.
How to read this file
No public record located for this file shows a criminal conviction of the named ministers for “theft” of the Manono mining licence. Kinshasa cites development delay, a Dathcom shareholder fight, and the Mining Code. AVZ, ICC emergency orders and ICSID interim measures treat parts of the same conduct as unlawful interference. Investigative desks document opacity. Words such as theft, stolen twenty million and donated seventy million are contested allegations unless a court has so found. The thirty pieces of silver are a moral metaphor, not evidence. Generated pictures are labelled as such.