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Paris — The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, lawyers for the Congolese government told Reuters. 

Congo is a major source of tin, tantalum and tungsten, so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones. But some artisanal mines are run by armed groups involved in massacres of civilians, mass rapes, looting and other crimes, according to U.N. experts and human rights groups. 

Apple does not directly source primary minerals and says it audits suppliers, publishes findings and funds bodies that seek to improve mineral traceability. 

Apple last year said it had “no reasonable basis for concluding” its products contain illegally exported minerals from conflict-hit zones. The tech giant has insisted it carefully verifies the origin of materials in its output. 

Its 2023 filing on conflict minerals to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said none of the smelters or refiners of 3T minerals or gold in its supply chain had financed or benefited armed groups in Congo or neighboring countries. 

But international lawyers representing Congo argue that Apple uses minerals pillaged from Congo and laundered through international supply chains, which they say renders the firm complicit in crimes taking place in Congo. 

In parallel complaints filed to the Paris prosecutor’s office and to a Belgian investigating magistrate’s office on Monday, Congo accuses local subsidiaries Apple France, Apple Retail France and Apple Retail Belgium of a range of offenses. 

These include covering up war crimes and the laundering of tainted minerals, handling stolen goods, and carrying out deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers supply chains are clean. 

“It is clear that the Apple group, Apple France and Apple Retail France know very well that their minerals supply chain relies on systemic wrongdoing,” says the French complaint, after citing U.N. and rights reports on conflict in east Congo. 

Belgium had a particular moral duty to act because looting of Congo’s resources began during the 19th-century colonial rule of its King Leopold II, Congo’s Belgian lawyer Christophe Marchand said. 

“It is incumbent on Belgium to help Congo in its effort to use judicial means to end the pillaging,” he said. 

The complaints, prepared by the lawyers on behalf of Congo’s justice minister, make allegations not just against the local subsidiaries but against the Apple group as a whole. 

France and Belgium were chosen because of their perceived strong emphasis on corporate accountability. Judicial authorities in both nations will decide whether to investigate the complaints further and bring criminal charges. 

In an unrelated case in March, a U.S. federal court rejected an attempt by private plaintiffs to hold Apple, Google, Tesla, Dell and Microsoft accountable for what the plaintiffs described as their dependence on child labor in Congolese cobalt mines. 

Minerals fuel violence 

Since the 1990s, Congo’s mining heartlands in the east have been devastated by waves of fighting between armed groups, some backed by neighboring Rwanda, and the Congolese military. 

Millions of civilians have died and been displaced. 

Competition for minerals is one of the main drivers of conflict as armed groups sustain themselves and buy weapons with the proceeds of exports, often smuggled via Rwanda, according to U.N. experts and human rights organizations. 

Rwanda denies benefiting from the trade, dismissing the allegations as unfounded. 

Among the appendices to Congo’s legal complaint in France was a statement issued by the U.S. State Department in July, expressing concerns about the role of the illicit trade in minerals from Congo, including tantalum, in financing conflict. 

The statement was a response to requests from the private sector for the U.S. government to clarify potential risks associated with manufacturing products using minerals extracted, transported or exported from eastern Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. 

Congo’s complaints focus on ITSCI, a metals industry-funded monitoring and certification scheme designed to help companies perform due diligence on suppliers of 3T minerals exported from Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. 

Congo’s lawyers argue that ITSCI has been discredited, including by the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) of which Apple is a member, and that Apple nevertheless uses ITSCI as a fig leaf to falsely present its supply chain as clean. 

The RMI, whose members include more than 500 companies, announced in 2022 it was removing ITSCI from its list of approved traceability schemes. 

In July, it said it was prolonging the suspension until at least 2026, saying ITSCI had not provided field observations from high-risk sites or explained how it was responding to an escalation of violence in North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda and is a key 3T mining area. 

ITSCI criticized the RMI’s own processes and defended its work in Congo as reliable. It has also rejected allegations in a 2022 report by campaigning group Global Witness entitled “The ITSCI Laundromat,” cited in Congo’s legal complaint in France, that it was complicit in the false labeling of minerals from conflict zones as coming from mines located in peaceful areas. 

Apple mentioned ITSCI five times in its 2023 filing on conflict minerals. The filing also made multiple mentions of the RMI, in which Apple said it had continued active participation and leadership but did not mention the RMI’s ditching of ITSCI. 

In its July statement, the U.S. State Department said flaws in traceability schemes have not garnered sufficient engagement and attention to lead to changes needed. 

Robert Amsterdam, a U.S.-based lawyer for Congo, said the French and Belgian complaints were the first criminal complaints by the Congolese state against a major tech company, describing them as a “first salvo” only. 

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse. 
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LONDON — European Union regulators said Tuesday they’re investigating whether TikTok breached the bloc’s digital rulebook by failing to deal with risks to Romania’s presidential election, which has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of electoral violations and Russian meddling.

The European Commission is escalating its scrutiny of the popular video-sharing platform after Romania’s top court canceled results of the first round of voting that resulted in an unknown far-right candidate becoming the front-runner.

The court made its unprecedented decision after authorities in the European Union and NATO member country declassified documents alleging Moscow organized a sprawling social media campaign to promote a long-shot candidate, Calin Georgescu.

“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act by failing to tackle such risks,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a press release. “It should be crystal clear that in the EU, all online platforms, including TikTok, must be held accountable.”

The European Commission is the 27-nation European Union’s executive arm and enforces the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations intended to clean up social media platforms and protect users from risks such as election-related misinformation. It ordered TikTok earlier this month to retain all information related to the election.

In the preliminary round of voting on Nov. 24 Georgescu was an outsider among the 13 candidates but ended up topping the polls. He was due to face a pro-EU reformist rival in a runoff before the court canceled the results.

The declassified files alleged that there was an “aggressive promotion campaign” to boost Georgescu’s popularity, including payments worth a total of $381,000 to TikTok influencers to promote him on the platform.

TikTok said it has “protected the integrity” of its platform over 150 elections around the world and is continuing to address these “industry-wide challenges.”

“TikTok has provided the European Commission with extensive information regarding these efforts, and we have transparently and publicly detailed our robust actions,” it said in a statement.

The commission said its investigation will focus on TikTok’s content recommendation systems, especially on risks related to “coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation.” It’s also looking at TikTok’s policies on political advertisements and “paid-for political content.”

TikTok said it doesn’t accept paid political ads and “proactively” removes content for violating policies on misinformation.

The investigation could result in TikTok making changes to fix problems or fines worth up to 6% of the company’s total global revenue.
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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates communications in the United States. Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017, has taken aim at big tech and China’s influence on U.S. communications. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports.
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Hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents’ personal and bank information, including Social Security numbers, were likely hacked by an international cybercriminal group asking for a ransom, state officials said on Saturday. 

In what Rhode Island officials described as extortion, the hackers threatened to release the stolen information unless they were paid an undisclosed amount of money. 

The breached data affects people who use the state’s government assistance programs and includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and healthcare purchased through the state’s HealthSource RI, Governor Dan McKee announced on Friday. 

Hackers gained access to RIBridges, the state’s online portal for obtaining social services earlier this month, the governor’s office said in a statement, but the breach was not confirmed by its vendor, Deloitte, until Friday. 

“Deloitte confirmed that there is a high probability that a cybercriminal has obtained files with personally identifiable information from RIBridges,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Saturday. 

A representative from McKee’s office was not immediately available to Reuters for comment. 

Anyone who has applied for or received benefits through those programs since 2016 could be affected. 

The state directed Deloitte to shut down RIBridges to remediate the threat, and for the time being, anyone applying for new benefits will have to do so on paper applications until the system is back up. 

Households believed to have been affected will receive a letter from the state notifying them of the problem and explaining steps to be taken to help protect their data and bank accounts. 
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