Congo Seals Glencore Offices in $3 Billion Tax Dispute
Congo’s tax agency shuttered Glencore’s Kamoto Copper offices, threatening a pending US-backed acquisition and signaling heightened fiscal pressure on foreign miners amid a copper price surge.
Congolese tax officials sealed the offices of Kamoto Copper Company in Kolwezi on July 9 after settlement negotiations collapsed. Security personnel accompanied agents from the Direction Générale des Impôts as they placed seals on corporate offices and several installations. The enforcement action targets one of the country’s largest copper and cobalt operations, which produced roughly 190,000 tons of copper last year.
The state alleges the Glencore-owned unit owes billions of dollars in unpaid taxes, with the DGI assessing the arrears at about $3 billion and local media reporting claims as high as $6 billion. A Glencore spokesperson said the company disputes the DGI’s claims and continues to engage with the authorities. While administrative buildings are shuttered, mining and processing operations at the nearby sites have so far continued without interruption.
The standoff carries outsized weight for global supply chains. Congo supplies roughly 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, a critical metal for electric vehicle batteries, and ranks as the second-largest copper producer globally. Copper prices have surged more than 40 percent over the past year and extended those gains into 2026, driven by artificial intelligence infrastructure and the clean-energy transition.
A US investment in limbo
The tax claim directly complicates a high-profile American investment. Orion CMC, a vehicle backed by the US International Development Finance Corp., reached a preliminary agreement in February to purchase 40 percent of Glencore’s stake in Kamoto and a second Congolese mine. That transaction has not yet closed, leaving Washington’s effort to secure non-Chinese mineral supply chains temporarily gridlocked by Kinshasa’s domestic revenue drive.
Glencore holds a 70 percent stake in Kamoto, meaning the government is effectively extracting concessions from an entity it partially owns through state miner Gécamines. The immediate market risk hinges on whether the tax agency expands its sealing order from administrative offices to actual mining operations. Any physical disruption to Kamoto’s output would ripple immediately into automotive and technology supply chains from Detroit to Shenzhen.
The Kolwezi raid fits a broader pattern of resource-rich nations demanding a larger cut as commodity prices climb. Kinshasa has spent 2026 aggressively pursuing untaxed revenue across its mining and banking sectors. For foreign investors, the sealed doors in Lualaba province are a stark reminder that operating in the world’s most lucrative copper belt requires navigating acute political and fiscal volatility.
