The title at the top of the tree

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.

 

Everything hangs from one box: research permit PR 13359 over the Manono lithium-tin ground in Tanganyika, later partly converted toward PE 13359, then split, cancelled, and in part re-awarded.

Dathcom Mining SA was formed in 2016 by state miner Cominière and private company Dathomir Mining Resources. AVZ Minerals, through AVZ International and later Green Lithium Holdings, bought its way to a majority — publicly described as about 75 per cent — by purchasing Dathomir’s private stake in stages. In April and May 2022 Mines Minister Antoinette N’Samba Kalambayi signed decrees converting the southern portion of PR 13359 into an exploitation permit for Dathcom. The north was left out, pending renewal. On 28 January 2023 the same minister signed two decrees cancelling both the acknowledgement of a partial waiver of the north and the exploitation permit itself.

The northern ground later appeared as PR 15775 and was worked through Manono Lithium SAS, a joint venture of Cominière and Jinxiang Lithium, a Zijin Mining vehicle. AVZ’s extension ground PR 4029 (seventy-nine blocks) was listed by CAMI as forfeited in March 2026 for unpaid surface fees. First lithium concentrate from the Zijin-operated plant was reported in 2026 while ICSID interim orders treating Dathcom as holder of the southern title were still outstanding.