The demand for lithium is rising as it has become a critical component needed in electric vehicle batteries. In 2021, the world produced 540 thousand metric tons of lithium and by 2030 the World Economic Forum projects the global demand will reach over 3 million metric tons.
Reserves of lithium have been discovered throughout the entire African continent with Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali all having notable supplies. The price of lithium has skyrocketed. In May 2022, the price was seven times higher than it was at the start of 2021. Mineral-rich nations like Zimbabwe are taking note.
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Zimbabwe has been mining lithium for 60 years and the government estimates that its Chinese-owned Bikita Minerals Mine, which is located 300 kilometers south of the capital Harare, has about 11 million metric tons of lithium resources. The country is the sixth largest producer of lithium, and the International Trade Administration projects that once it fully exploits its known resources it could potentially meet 20% of the world’s demand.
“We’ve seen a lot of investments within the mining sector over the past few years,” said Prosper Chitambara, a development economist for the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe. “For us to realize the full potential from the mining sector, it means we have to move up the value chain.”
“Any government in the world is bound to react when your resources are just flying in all directions,” said Farai Maguwu, director of Zimbabwe’s Center for Natural Resource Governance. “However, the lithium concentrate is still being exported lawfully out of the country. I think the government simply wanted to control the lithium that was being extracted by artisanal miners, which was not being accounted for and it was being smuggled out of the country.”
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Artisanal mining, or small-scale mining, is a largely informal method where individuals use basic tools to extract minerals. The Zimbabwean government estimates that artisanal mining plays a critical role in the livelihood of over 1 million Zimbabweans.
“Artisanal miners were the most affected by the ban,” said Joseph Mujere, a lecturer in Modern African History at the University of York. “They had already accumulated loads of raw lithium that they were preparing to sell,” he said.
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The Center for Natural Resource Governance estimates the government has lost nearly $2 billion in minerals smuggled across the border through artisanal mining leakage.
“There are two narratives,” Maguwu said. “The political narrative that mining is the savior of the economy. Then the grassroots narrative, which says mining is undermining our livelihoods. We sit in between. We want to see mining contribute to the economy, but not at the expense of the Zimbabwean people.”
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While artisanal miners were affected by the export ban, the Chinese have benefited from its exemptions. Both the Bikita mine, which is the largest lithium mine in the country, and the Arcadia Lithium mine are Chinese owned.
In 2022, Chinese mining companies Tsingshan, China Nonferrous and Huayou Cobalt invested nearly $1.5 billion in Zimbabwe and in the same year, Sinomine Resource Group announced its plans to expand its current production at the Bikita mine by investing $200 million into building a new lithium plant.
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“When we invest in the Chinese and allow them to come and do what the Zimbabweans are capable of doing, we are building China, not Zimbabwe,” Maguwu said. “Zimbabweans are saying leave room for the Zimbabwean people.”
The Chinese Embassy in Zimbabwe declined to comment on this statement.
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China accounts for over 70% of global EV battery production capacity, and with over 20 years of consistent commitment to African nations it has placed itself in the right position to access the resources needed to continue this trend.
“The Chinese have played for keeps,” said Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The United States, our relationship is not always permanent. The Chinese are just consistent in that way,” he said.
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In December, President Joe Biden welcomed 49 African leaders to Washington, D.C., for the country’s second U.S.-African Leaders Summit and its first since the Obama administration.
“The United States is all in on Africa’s future,” Biden remarked at the summit.
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The summit was seen as an important step in trying to restore relations, which were rocky during the Trump administration. Notably missing from the event, however, was Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has been under U.S. travel sanctions since 2002. Foreign Affairs Minister Frederick Shava attended in his place.
“The fact that he came is also still a signal that the U.S. is interested in keeping the door open with Zimbabwe,” Dizolele said.
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While the U.S. has made its intentions clear when it comes to engaging in African business, the reality is China has sunk its roots in the continent. It will be tough for the U.S. to make up for the lost time. In 2009, China overtook the U.S. as Africa’s largest trading partner. The country has grown from $121 million in total traded goods with Africa in 1950 to $254 billion in 2021, compared to the U.S. which sat at $64 billion in 2021.
“America has not been consistent in the way it engages with Africa,” said Dizolele. “If you leave and come back 10 years later, that void you left will be filled by somebody else, so it’s important that we be consistent.”
Lyft‘s cofounders, CEO Logan Green and president John Zimmer, will soon step back from their day-to-day roles, the company announced on Monday.
David Risher, a former retail executive at Amazon, will be CEO of the ridesharing company beginning April 17, when Green will step aside to serve as chair of the board. Zimmer will transition out of his role on June 30 to serve as vice chair of the Lyft board. Lyft’s current chairman Sean Aggarwal will step down from his post but will remain on the board, the company said
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Lyft shares rose around 5% after hours on the news.
Green and Zimmer founded Lyft in 2012 and took the company public in 2019. Lyft shares have fallen more than 70% in the last year.
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“I am honored to step into the CEO role at such an important moment in the company’s history, and am prepared to take this business to new levels of success,” Risher said in a statement.
Confetti falls as Lyft CEO Logan Green (C) and President John Zimmer (LEFT C) ring the Nasdaq opening bell celebrating the company’s initial public offering (IPO) on March 29, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. The ride hailing app company’s shares were initially priced at $72.
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Mario Tama / Getty Images
Risher joined Amazon in 1997 as its first vice president of product and store development. He was a top lieutenant of Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, and went on to serve as senior vice president of marketing and merchandising before exiting the company in 2002. Risher has been on Lyft’s board since 2021.
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— CNBC’s Annie Palmer, Laura Batchelor and Deirdre Bosacontributed to this report.
An influential consultant for Amazon sellers admitted Monday to bribing employees of the e-commerce giant for information to help his clients boost sales and to get their suspended accounts reinstated.
Ephraim “Ed” Rosenberg wrote in a LinkedIn post that he will plead guilty in federal court to a criminal charge, stemming from a 2020 indictment that charged six people with conspiring to give sellers an unfair competitive advantage on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty, including one former Amazon employee who was sentenced last year to 10 months in prison.
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Rosenberg, who’s based in Brooklyn, is a well-known figure in the world of Amazon third-party sellers. He runs a consultancy business that advises entrepreneurs on how to sell products on the online marketplace, and navigate unforeseen issues with their Amazon account. Rosenberg’s Facebook group for sellers, ASGTG, has over 68,000 members, and he hosts a popular conference for sellers each year.
“For a time, some years ago, I began to obtain and use Amazon’s internal annotations — Amazon’s private property — to learn the reasons for sellers’ suspensions, in order to assist them in getting reinstated, if possible,” wrote Rosenberg, who is due to appear in U.S. District Court in Seattle on March 30, for a change of plea hearing, according to court records. “On some occasions, I paid bribes, directly and indirectly, to Amazon employees to obtain annotations and reinstate suspended accounts. These actions were against the law.”
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As recently as last month, in LinkedIn messages to CNBC, Rosenberg denied prosecutors’ allegations, calling the case a “conspiracy” and claiming he was framed. On Monday, Rosenberg said he “regrets” his involvement in the bribery scheme.
“In the course of this case, I have made some public statements about this prosecution and the indictment,” Rosenberg said. “Those statements are not accurate and I disavow those statements. This statement I am making now is accurate and truthful and I will continue to stand by it.”
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Since at least 2017, prosecutors allege Rosenberg and other consultants allegedly bribed Amazon employees to leak information about the company’s search and ranking algorithms and to share confidential data on their competition in the marketplace. In all, the individuals allegedly paid $100,000 worth of bribes to employees and reaped more than $100 million in competitive benefits, the DOJ said.
In 2018, Amazon fired four employees in India who were allegedly connected to the bribery scheme.
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Previously unsealed court documents said Rosenberg allegedly sent a “veiled threat” to an Amazon employee at the company’s Seattle headquarters as part of the bribery scheme, Bloomberg reported. The documents also detailed defendants’ elaborate efforts to dodge detection by authorities, including allegedly stuffing a llama-shaped ottoman with cash believed to be bribes, according to Bloomberg.
Rosenberg is part of what’s become a sizable industry in helping sellers navigate the complexities and chaos of the Amazon marketplace, where some 2 million sellers are responsible for more than half of the goods sold on the site. Amazon launched its online marketplace in 2000, allowing everyone from established brands to mom-and-pop shops to sell products.
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While the marketplace has helped Amazon haul in tens of billions of dollars in sales, it’s also become a notorious host to counterfeit, unsafe and expired goods. Behind the scenes, scammers have for years resorted to illicit tactics to squash competitors, artificially boost their listings or bypass Amazon’s marketplace rules.
Amazon has said it invests hundreds of millions of dollars per year to ensure products are safe and compliant. The providing of internal data to sellers by employees violates Amazon’s seller policies and code of conduct.
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Rosenberg said attempts to bribe Amazon employees are “wrong and criminal.”
“No one should pay bribes to Amazon employees to provide private Amazon information,” Rosenberg wrote on Monday. “If it is apparent that internal information has been illegally leaked, no one should use it. Nor should anyone pay any Amazon employees for any other special favors regarding a seller’s account.”
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An attorney for Rosenberg declined to comment.
An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that it has systems in place to detect suspicious behavior and teams that work to stop prohibited activity on the marketplace.
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“Amazon is grateful to have worked with federal authorities in their thorough pursuit of this case,” the spokesperson said. “There is no place for fraud at Amazon, and we will continue to hold bad actors accountable.”
The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission filed a complaint against crypto exchange Binance, its co-founder, Changpeng Zhao, and its former chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, alleging that Binance actively solicited U.S. users and subverted the exchanges own “ineffective compliance program,” according to a filing in Illinois federal court Monday.
The filing has the potential to upend the exchange’s operations and is potentially just the first salvo in a regulatory crackdown on the world’s largest crypto exchange. Beyond disgorgement and any monetary costs, the CFTC filing asked the court to impose further relief, including trading and registration bans.
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The regulator alleged that Binance, Zhao, and Lim violated eight core provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act, including laws that require controls “designed to prevent and detect money laundering and terrorism financing.”
Just days prior to the CFTC filing, CNBC reported on how Binance employees worked to subvert the exchange’s compliance controls in China, using some of the same techniques that the CFTC alleges Binance to solicit U.S. users.
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Zhao and Lim allegedly “actively cultivated lucrative and commercially important ‘VIP’ customers, including institutional customers, located in the United States,” the complaint said.
“Today’s enforcement action demonstrates that there is no location, or claimed lack of location, that will prevent the CFTC from protecting American investors. I have been clear that the CFTC will continue to use all of its authority to find and stop misconduct in the volatile and risky digital asset market,” CFTC chair Rostin Benham said in a statement.
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Binance and Zhao took steps to purposefully obscure where the exchange’s subsidiaries were located, the regulator said. This was part of a larger strategy that Zhao said was an effort to “keep countries clean,” the regulator alleged in the filing.
A key part of Binance’s alleged effort to generate fees and solicit U.S. users was the exchange’s VIP program, for high net worth individuals, the CFTC filing said.
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“Binance is aware of its VIPs’ identities and geographic locations because Binance monitors its sources of transaction volume and fee-based revenue as a matter of course in conducting its operations,” the CFTC complaint alleges.
Binance’s VIPs were offered special privileges when law enforcement agencies pursued them or froze their assets, the CFTC alleged, claiming Binance gave VIPs a heads up or suggested they take their assets off the platform.
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“Do not directly tell the user to run,” Binance instructed its VIP team, the filing alleged. “If the user is a big trader, or a smart one, he/she will get the hint.”
CNBC previously reported on how Binance’s customer service and VIP representatives counseled users in mainland China on how to evade Binance’s compliance systems. The use of virtual private networks and alternative non-state documents was advised by some volunteers and employees to mainland Chinese traders. The CFTC filing alleges that Binance engaged in similar activity for its U.S. users.
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“But as best we can we try to ask our users to use VPN or ask them to provide (if there are an entity) non-US documents. On the surface we cannot be seen to have US users but in reality we should get them through other creative means,” Lim told a Binance employee in 2020 according to the filing.
Lim allegedly advised against outright fraud but encouraged “creative means” to sidestep regulations. Binance “can encourage them to be a non kyc account,” Lim. KYC stands for know-your-customer, a set of principles that guide anti-money laundering programs for financial institutions and are a key part of fighting terrorist and illicit financing.
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“We have made significant investments over the past two years to ensure we do not have US users active on our platform,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement, calling the complaint “unexpected and disappointing.”
Zhao’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment. But,Zhao posted a tweet that said “4” in an apparent response to the CFTC filing.
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The number four is a call to Binance’s devoted international userbase to dismiss negative publicity about the exchange as “fake news.”
“The best path forward is to protect our users and to collaborate with regulators to develop a clear, thoughtful regulatory regime,” the Binance statement continued.
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