House Lawmakers Call for Reimposition of Sanctions on Israeli Billionaire

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., joined by fellow committee members Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., asked the Biden administration to reinstate Magnitsky Sanctions against Dan Gertler, an Israeli businessman with mining operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In their Feb. 3 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, they said: “Lifting the sanctions against Mr. Gertler upends U.S. policy toward the DRC and threatens the integrity of U.S. sanctions programs more broadly. The Treasury Department’s sudden reversal of its own careful 2017 decision is not only arbitrary and capricious, but as far as we can tell was done without even a scintilla of policy or legal justification. Given these stark facts, we strongly encourage you to revoke this license as soon as possible.

“No information has been provided by the Treasury Department to indicate that the Magnitsky Sanctions were wrongly implemented in the first place, nor are there any indications that Mr. Gertler has demonstrated contrition for his corrupt dealings and undertaken reform. In fact, the publicly available evidence demonstrates the opposite is true. Since being sanctioned, he has created shell companies, opened accounts with tiny financial institutions in the DRC over which he maintains control, and received pay in foreign currencies to circumvent our laws. Instead of being further scrutinized for these evasions, Mr. Gertler has been rewarded.”