WASHINGTON — 5 years in the past, the USA accused a rich Israeli diamond seller of greater than $1 billion value of corrupt mining and oil offers within the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying they undermined financial progress and “the rule of regulation” within the impoverished African nation.

Now, that businessman, Dan Gertler, has discovered a stunning ally in his quest to have his title faraway from a U.S. sanctions checklist: President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Regardless of the U.S. accusations that Mr. Gertler had in impact looted the nation, Mr. Tshisekedi instantly intervened with President Biden, asking that the Treasury Division roll again the punishment, paperwork obtained by The New York Instances present.

“The Democratic Republic of Congo now not has any grievances in opposition to Mr. Gertler and his group,” Mr. Tshisekedi stated in a letter, not beforehand made public, that he despatched to Mr. Biden in Might.

How Mr. Gertler managed to enlist the president of Congo, whom American officers have celebrated for his efforts to fight widespread corruption since he took workplace in 2019, is an illustration of the decided bid by Mr. Gertler to raise a set of sanctions that prohibits corporations with ties to the USA from doing enterprise with him and freezes cash he has in worldwide banks.

Mr. Tshisekedi’s lobbying efforts got here after Mr. Gertler agreed to return to Congo an estimated $2 billion value of mining and oil-drilling rights secured over the previous twenty years. In change, the Congolese authorities agreed to pay Mr. Gertler’s corporations $260 million and to assist him foyer in Washington to have the sanctions revoked, the settlement with Mr. Gertler says. The transfer would permit Congo to resell the mining rights to new traders.

“The phrases of the settlement are unprecedented and on any view ought to be positively obtained — even by my detractors,” Mr. Gertler wrote in a letter in March to 2 dozen human rights teams.

However human rights activists say that the settlement is hardly a superb deal for Congo and that Mr. Gertler continues to be entitled to gather probably tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} a yr in royalties on copper and cobalt mining within the nation.

“Removed from paying an applicable consequence for his actions, Mr. Gertler will maintain amassing a median of $200,000 a day in royalties from these three extremely profitable mining initiatives for no less than one other decade,” human rights teams stated in a letter despatched final month to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, urging them to go away the sanctions in place.

Mr. Gertler declined to reply on the file to written questions. Officers on the State and Treasury Departments and the White Home additionally declined to touch upon the pending petition to revoke the sanctions.

However the State Division did say in an announcement, referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo, that the USA would “proceed to induce the D.R.C. to deal with the corruption and regulatory inefficiencies that plague the enterprise working surroundings with a purpose to appeal to extra accountable overseas funding.”

Congolese officers stated they nervous that with sanctions hanging over Mr. Gertler, the nation was not fully legally clear to promote the mining rights that belonged to him. Lifting the sanctions might assist them appeal to worldwide traders, they argued.

The alternatives earlier than Mr. Biden and his aides mirror the longstanding complexity of U.S. relations with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is without doubt one of the richest nations on the planet when it comes to its extraordinary mineral wealth. But it is usually one of many poorest, with no less than 60 p.c of the inhabitants dwelling in excessive poverty.

As local weather points have change into a serious a part of the Biden administration’s agenda, U.S. officers have stepped up engagement with Congo, attempting to problem China’s dominant position as a overseas investor within the mining sector there in latest many years.

High Biden cupboard officers have descended on Congo, bringing hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ value of grants and technical help to implement labor legal guidelines. America signed an settlement with Congo and Zambia in December for the creation of an electrical automobile battery plant, a notable improvement for a continent that normally exports metals for processing.

However corruption stays an issue in Congo — and a priority for the Biden administration. An audit final yr confirmed a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of lacking revenues collected by Gécamines, the state-controlled copper and cobalt mining firm that had a number of offers with Mr. Gertler over time.

Together with his mining investments and philanthropy, Mr. Gertler is probably essentially the most well-known overseas investor in Congo, which he first visited in 1997, when he was 23 and promoting tough diamonds. A couple of years after his arrival, he had negotiated the unique proper to export the nation’s diamonds.

The U.S. authorities estimated that the misplaced revenues to Congo related to Mr. Gertler’s offers from 2010 to 2012 have been about $1.36 billion, or roughly half the nation’s total well being finances throughout that interval.

Because the Treasury Division added extra sanctions in 2018 on companies related to Mr. Gertler — past what it had first imposed the earlier yr — it stated, “A monetary toll might be imposed on people and corporations that exploit harmless individuals and susceptible jurisdictions for their very own private achieve.”

Mr. Gertler has lengthy disputed the allegations, arguing that he by no means paid any bribes and that his investments in Congo supplied billions in taxes and hundreds of jobs.

Mr. Gertler made a earlier try and have the sanctions lifted in 2019, in the course of the Trump administration. He employed Alan Dershowitz, an ally of the president, in addition to Louis J. Freeh, the previous F.B.I. director, and efficiently pressed Steven T. Mnuchin, then the Treasury secretary, to largely repeal the sanctions, as The New York Instances reported in 2021.

However Mr. Biden’s group, days after his inauguration in 2021, moved to reinstate the sanctions. “U.S. credibility has been considerably broken,” it stated, “as has the credibility of the World Magnitsky sanctions program,” referring to the human rights and corruption regulation beneath which Mr. Gertler was punished, in line with paperwork launched beneath the Freedom of Data Act.

However Mr. Gertler didn’t surrender.

His Washington-based regulation agency, Arnold & Porter, submitted a brand new petition to have the sanctions lifted.

The Instances has sued the Treasury Division looking for copies of this correspondence, amongst different emails.

The Congolese president, for his half, warned that failing to raise the sanctions might have far-reaching penalties for entry to the nation’s pure sources.

“If sanctions are perceived by overseas traders as a useless finish to the liquidation of their entities and the cessation of their actions, this nervousness will certainly result in the disappearance of overseas direct funding in Congo,” Mr. Tshisekedi wrote in his letter to Mr. Biden.

In latest weeks, Mr. Gertler’s lobbying marketing campaign has prolonged to worldwide human rights teams, which have been extremely crucial of his actions in Congo, asking them to endorse his effort to have the sanctions lifted by the American authorities.

“You could have achieved the specified modifications being sought,” Mr. Gertler wrote within the letter to the human rights teams in February. “To oppose this settlement is to say that persevering with my struggling is extra vital than bettering the lives of the Congolese individuals.”

However the teams have fired again with letters to Mr. Gertler and the U.S. authorities, arguing that he was nonetheless wrongly making the most of corrupt offers in Congo even after he promised to return belongings his corporations owned.

“If Gertler succeeds,” stated Justyna Gudzowska, the director of illicit finance coverage on the Sentry, a human rights group, “this may change into the playbook for different rich sanctions targets — together with Russian oligarchs — from everywhere in the world.”