I fear things are going somewhat off the rails over there in Dan's Republic. Just a day after a Bloomberg article appeared in which Gertler goes to extreme lengths in tooting his own horn, some of his DRC business partners are already running for cover.
In Gertler's defense, he has a point when he says that guys like him bring something to the table when they do business in places and with people that no one else will. Whether their rewards for bringing that "something" are commensurate with the benefits that accrue to the host country is another matter.
The answer is probably not, but that is generally true whether the outside business is a big-name operator like Barrick or Xstrata or an in-the-shadows guy like Gertler. Multinational mining companies aren't in the business of development; they're in the business of maximizing their profits.
Anyway, thanks to his candid Bloomberg tell-all, perhaps Dan has succeeded in shining some much-needed light on this subject.
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