July 3, REUTERS – Rwandan company Boss Mining Solution bought minerals smuggled from rebel-held areas of neighboring Congo, helping fund an insurgency in that vast African country, according to a confidential report by a group of United Nations experts that was reviewed by Reuters.

The U.N. report marks the first time the world body has named a company that’s purportedly complicit in trafficking minerals looted from Congo since M23 insurgents seized a key mining area there last year. Boss Mining was named in the U.N. report, which documents how recent territorial gains in Congo by M23 have further destabilized a region beset by decades of conflict. The heavily armed rebels, whose stated aim is to overthrow the government in Kinshasa and ensure the safety of the Congolese Tutsi minority, have been accused by the U.N. of plundering Congo’s natural resources and committing atrocities against civilians, backed by the government of neighboring Rwanda.