US Company Helps Fuel Congo War, Charges UN Report - GlobalPost

UNITED NATIONS — A Nevada-based company’s purchase of minerals looted from eastern Congo is helping to finance a decade-long war that has claimed the lives of millions of civilians, an unpublished United Nations report claims.

Niotan Inc., of Mound House, Nev., is the first American company to be identified as a buyer of conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is one of several companies cited in the U.N. study on how the illegal trade of the region’s vast mineral resources, including gold, has kept the war going by enriching both rebels and Congolese army units.

Many of the rare minerals are needed to make mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices.

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