Read the Final Statement published by the NCP 29 August 2023: English
On 10 January 2021, André Amisi Rushingwa, Delvaux Bwisibo Mukunda, and Raymond Minani Muganira submitted a specific instance to the US NCP alleging that Gramercy Funds Management LLC (Gramercy) had not observed the Concepts and Principles (Chapter I), General Policies (Chapter II), Human Rights (Chapter IV), and Employment and Industrial Relations (Chapter V) provisions of the Guidelines.
Key issues raised by the submitters related to the dissolution of a former mining company, Société Minière et Industrielle du Kivu (SOMINKI), where the submitters had been employees and at which time thousands of workers were dismissed without severance pay or jobs with the new company that had taken over the gold mine assets in the DRC. Banro, a then Canadian company, owned 93% of the new mining company and Gramercy had made investments in Banro as a bondholder. Banro later declared bankruptcy before redomiciling to the Cayman Islands and Gramercy’s holding of debt was converted to a significant minority equity ownership share. In January 2023, Banro sold the shares of its subsidiaries that held all DRC mining assets, following which Gramercy no longer had any ownership interest or participation in the DRC mines.
The three submitters asserted that, as a significant minority owner of Banro, Gramercy had responsibilities to the former SOMINKI employees. They requested that Gramercy should “influence” Banro to apply good practices and DRC laws with respect to the liquidation of SOMINKI.
The NCP of Canada handled a related specific instance involving Banro in 2016 (read more).
On 29 August 2023, the US NCP published a final statement deciding not to accept the specific instance for further examination. The decision not to accept the specific instance was made as the original issues took place prior to the existence of Gramercy as a company, the inability of Gramercy to leverage the new owner of the mine following its divestment, and therefore that the consideration of the issues would not contribute to the purposes and effectiveness of the Guidelines.