DON'T CALL THEM CONTRACTORS 

CALL EM MERCENARIES
Blackwater founder Erik Prince accused of Libya weapons ban violations in UN report

Prince is likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban

By Jared Malsin | The Wall Street Journal


DUBAI — A United Nations report accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of assisting in violations of an international arms embargo on Libya, placing the military contractor at risk of U.N. sanctions, according to a diplomat with access to the report.

The report by the U.N. Panel of Experts that monitors the ban on transfers of weapons to Libya says companies controlled by Mr. Prince provided three aircraft to assist in sending helicopters and military contractors to help Russian-backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar in 2019.

The plan to send Western mercenaries to Libya developed as foreign weapons and fighters poured into the country in 2019 and 2020 from a variety of outside powers, including Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, deepening a conflict that has been ongoing since 2014, the report says, according to the diplomat.


Erik Prince. (Fox News screen image)

Mr. Prince is likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban, according to the New York-based diplomat and a former official with knowledge of the situation. The permanent members of the Security Council, including the U.S., Russia, or China, could veto any potential sanctions against Mr. Prince, who has had dealings with all three countries.

"Erik Prince had absolutely nothing to do with any operation in Libya in 2019, or at any other time," a spokesman for Mr. Prince said in an email.

"Erik Prince had absolutely nothing to do with any operation in Libya in 2019, or at any other time."— Spokesman for Erik Prince

A U.N. spokesman said the organization had no specific comment on the Panel of Experts report.

"It is incumbent on our member states to ensure that the sanctions are respected and enforced," said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric De La Rivière.

The report itself has been finalized and submitted to the U.N.’s headquarters in New York. It is unlikely to be altered before it is released to the public in the coming weeks, according to diplomats.

Mr. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, came to prominence during the Iraq war, when Blackwater provided private security guards to U.S. officials and contractors working for the company shot dead more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in a 2007 mass killing in Baghdad. Blackwater has since changed its name to Xe Services and later Academi.

Mr. Prince’s financial and political ambitions rose because of his close relationship to the Trump administration. Mr. Prince is the brother of Mr. Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos. In December, Mr. Trump pardoned the four Blackwater guards accused in the 2007 killings.

Shell companies

According to the diplomat, the forthcoming U.N. report says companies controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft to people who sent Western mercenaries and military hardware to aid Mr. Haftar in the opening months of the commander’s failed assault on Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli. Launched in April 2019, Mr. Haftar’s attack on the capital plunged Libya into its worst fighting since the armed rebellion that overthrew Col. Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

According to the diplomat, the U.N. panel’s report says that firms controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft through a series of shell companies to a Dubai-based company, Lancaster 6, which sent helicopters and a group of Western mercenaries to Libya to support Mr. Haftar. The plan unraveled, and the fighters left Libya.

One of the planes, a Pilatus PC-6, was delivered to Libya for use in reconnaissance and intelligence operations for Mr. Haftar’s forces, according to the diplomat with access to the report. A U.S. company, TST Humanitarian Surveys, controlled by Mr. Prince through a U.S.-based attorney, sold the plane to another company in Austria partly owned by Mr. Prince, which then sold it to Lancaster 6 in June 2019, the diplomat with access to the report said. The plane arrived in Libya days later, according to the diplomat.

The other two planes, including an Antonov An-26 cargo plane intended to transport helicopters, arrived in Jordan and didn’t fly to Libya, but were identified in the report as part of a broader plan to send military aid to Mr. Haftar.

The plan also involved several associates of Mr. Prince, according to the diplomat and the former official with knowledge of the situation. The operation was first reported last year by Bloomberg and the New York Times. Until now, U.N. investigators hadn’t directly accused Mr. Prince of being involved in the scheme.

Helicopter deal

Using funds from a Dubai-based company and a cover story involving a fake plan for a geospatial survey in Jordan, the team later obtained in South Africa three Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopters and three Super Puma helicopters. At least one of the helicopters was transported to Libya. The helicopters were purchased for a total of more than $13 million, a price well above their market value and one that suggested profit was a key motive behind the operation.

"This is basically a scheme where they wanted to make money around procurement of weapons," said the former official with knowledge of the situation.

"This is basically a scheme where they wanted to make money around procurement of weapons."— Source speaking to the Wall Street Journal

The role in the effort of companies based in Dubai also highlights Mr. Prince’s close ties to the United Arab Emirates and its ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. Mr. Prince has been linked to a range of mercenary efforts on behalf of the Emirates, including an effort to combat Somali pirates, according to a previous U.N. report. The U.A.E. also has been a key military backer of Mr. Haftar, sending air defenses, armed drones, ammunition and airplanes to support the militia leader’s campaigns, according to multiple U.N. reports. Mr. Prince visited Abu Dhabi in recent weeks, according to the diplomat.

The U.N. report, the diplomat said, also accuses Mr. Prince of violating a U.N. Security Council resolution by failing to provide information about the alleged violations of the arms embargo when contacted by the Panel of Experts.

In addition to naming Mr. Prince in the report, the U.N. Panel of Experts is also expected to separately refer Mr. Prince to the United Nations’ Sanctions Committee, which will make a decision about whether to impose an asset freeze or travel ban to be implemented by individual countries including the U.S., the diplomat said.

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

'This Is Bad': Haiti Reportedly Hired Erik Prince to Help Kill Gang Members

"It's hard to overstate how badly wrong bringing in foreign mercenaries, such as those allied with Erik Prince, will likely go given the current security, social, and political dynamics," one journalist warned.


Blackwater founder Erik Prince walks with police during an anti-crime operation on April 5, 2025 in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
(Photo: Agencia Press South/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
May 28, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

"What could possibly go wrong?"

That's a questionNew York Times readers sarcastically asked on social media Wednesday, after the newspaper reported that Erik Prince, founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater and a key ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, is working with Haiti's interim government "to conduct lethal operations against gangs that are terrorizing the nation and threatening to take over its capital."

The newspaper noted that Prince declined to comment, and while Blackwater is now defunct, the former Navy SEAL "owns other private military entities." The reporting is based on unnamed American and Haitian officials and other security experts.

"Haiti's government has hired American contractors, including Mr. Prince, in recent months to work on a secret task force to deploy drones meant to kill gang members," who "have been killing civilians and seizing control of vast areas of territory" in the Caribbean country, the Times detailed.

"Mr. Prince's team has been operating the drones since March, but the authorities have yet to announce the death or capture of a single high-value target," according to the paper. Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, said the drone attacks have killed more than 200 people.

American journalist Michael Deibert said on social media, "If this story is accurate, on what authority does Haiti's unelected, temporary interim [government] invite foreign forces into the country and by what means—with whose money—do they intend to pay them for their work there?"

The U.S. State Department has poured millions into Haiti's National Police but told the Times it is not paying Prince.

Deibert said that "as someone who has reported on Haiti's armed groups for 25 years, it's hard to overstate how badly wrong bringing in foreign mercenaries, such as those allied with Erik Prince, will likely go given the current security, social, and political dynamics in the country."



Also weighing in on social media, Keanu Heydari, a history Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, said: "A lot's going on here! A majority-Black nation, hollowed out by decades of foreign intervention, 'turning to' a white war profiteer to restore 'order.' That is not about logistics, this is about coloniality."

Heydari continued:
This isn't a story about drones and gangs. It's about how the world has made it structurally impossible for Haiti to govern itself—then offers mercenaries as a "solution." Haiti's sovereignty has been chipped away by debt, coups, U.N. missions, and now private warlords.

Why does Erik Prince show up where Black and Brown countries are in crisis? Because the global market rewards violence disguised as security, especially when it's sold by Westerners to postcolonial states. It's racial capitalism in full view.

The NYT missed the story: This isn't a desperate government making tough choices. It's a story of empire outsourcing control, where mercenaries profit from the very chaos empire helped produce. Haiti deserves justice, not occupation by other means.


The Times article follows The Economist's reporting earlier this month that Haiti's interim government, the Transitional Presidential Council, "is so desperate that it is exploring deals with private military contractors. It has been talking to Osprey Global Solutions, a firm based in North Carolina. The founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, visited Haiti in April to negotiate contracts to provide attack drones and training for an anti-gang task force. The council declined to comment."

In response to that paragraph in the May 7 article, Jake Johnston, director of international research at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti, also asked, "What could possibly go wrong?"

THE BLACK PRINCE OF PRIVATE SECURITY SERVICES
Exclusive: Trump supporter Prince reaches deal with Congo to help secure mineral wealth

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BLACK PRINCE OF PRIVATIZED WAR

What Are Erik Prince’s Plans for the Second Trump Administration?

By John P. Ruehl

May 13, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Image by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons 2.0

The deportation case of Maryland resident and Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia has drawn major attention to the practice of sending migrants to El Salvador for detention. One man looking to capitalize on this trend is Erik Prince, the former CEO of the private military company (PMC) Blackwater.

In a plan that has caught the interest of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and President Donald Trump, Prince has proposed deporting undocumented migrants through his new venture, 2USV, on a fleet of private aircraft. A “Treaty of Cession” would designate part of El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison as U.S. territory, and the transfer of “a prisoner to such a facility would not be an Extradition nor a Deportation,” according to a Politico article. The prison complex, which Prince previously toured in August 2024, would then be leased back to El Salvador to run, and the U.S. prison standards would not apply to it, similar to Guantanamo Bay.

If the U.S. had a counterpart to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late architect of Russia’s modern PMC network, it is Erik Prince. Relentlessly entrepreneurial, Prince became a prominent player in Washington during the Bush and first Trump administrations, though he was mostly sidelined during the Obama and Biden years. He now returns to Washington’s inner circle seeking to increase his role again, having visited the White House shortly after Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and serving as a character witness during the confirmation hearing for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

As a hugely influential figure across the American PMC ecosystem, Prince’s Salvadoran pitch is one of many ambitious and controversial ventures he’s pursued. But his track record is uneven, with many proposals never materializing, and those that do often bring intense scrutiny.

Prince and Previous Administrations

Erik Prince first rose to prominence after founding the PMC Blackwater in 1997, initially offering training services to police and military personnel. After 9/11, Blackwater became a central player in the war on terror, expanding into armed security, logistics, transportation, and working with CIA assassination teams.

The company’s rise was accompanied by controversy. In 2006, its contractors allegedly disarmed and held U.S. soldiers at gunpoint in Iraq. A year later, Blackwater guards killed 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, causing global outrage. Prince and his allies argued the company was scapegoated for a chaotic war effort, while WikiLeaks files showed similar incidents with U.S. military members. Following these incidents involving the company, its reputation was severely damaged. Iraq revoked its license in 2007, and though the Obama administration briefly continued working with Prince, mounting scrutiny forced the severing of ties.

Erik Prince nonetheless remained active abroad. After selling Blackwater in 2010, he moved to Abu Dhabi, where he helped create a presidential guard for the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) royal family. Though later marginalized amid media concerns and questions over funds, Prince remained an influential adviser in expanding the UAE’s PMC operations in Yemen, Somalia, and Libya.

In 2014, Prince also launched the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group (FSG), evolving from a Bermuda-registered shell. The company focused on logistics and security support for Chinese firms involved in projects across Africa under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

He emerged from the American political wilderness in 2015 as a vocal supporter and donor to Trump’s election campaign. His sister, Betsy DeVos, was later appointed secretary of education. In 2017, Prince reportedly participated in a secretive meeting in the Seychelles to set up a backchannel between U.S. and Russian officials. He continued pitching unconventional proposals throughout Trump’s term, with Trump pardoning four Blackwater contractors convicted in the 2007 massacre in 2020. The incoming Biden administration subsequently distanced itself from Prince and his network.

Latin America

Now, with a more assertive Trump administration back in office, Erik Prince is aligning new business proposals with U.S. policy goals and those of receptive foreign leaders. In March 2025, he traveled to Ecuador and announced plans to combat organized crime and illegal fishing in coordination with President Daniel Noboa, who was reelected in April, showing openness of the country to amend its constitution and permit the deployment of U.S. troops to fight criminal groups.

Prince’s approach taps into a consistent Washington view that stabilizing Latin America will reduce migration pressure on the U.S. border. Trump appears open to this, but the legacy of American intervention in the region from the Monroe Doctrine onward has often created more instability than it resolved. Whether private contractors can deliver real stability or simply serve short-term strategic aims remains unclear.

Trump and Prince also see PMCs as useful tools in destabilizing governments deemed hostile to U.S. interests. In 2019, Prince pitched a plan to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro using mercenaries. The following year, Operation Gideon—a failed coup attempt partly involving Florida-based PMC Silvercorp USA—led to the capture of several former U.S. servicemen by Venezuelan forces, though most fighters were Latin American, reflecting common American PMC sourcing practices.

Though the operation failed, another PMC-based operation proved more consequential soon after. In 2021, mostly Colombian mercenaries hired by the Florida-based company CTU were implicated in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in the capital Port-au-Prince. The operation required minimal military resources but had a major political fallout, triggering a power vacuum and rising gang violence.

Prince was not tied to Operation Gideon or the 2021 Haiti operation, but in 2024, following Venezuela’s disputed July election, Prince began supporting a new opposition movement called Ya Casi Venezuela. While its goals remain opaque, Prince’s involvement suggests plans are once again underway in Caracas.

Further Abroad

Prince is also looking further abroad, building on years of groundwork. In 2023, he reportedly sought to deploy 2,500 Latin American personnel to the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to halt rebel advances and protect mining areas, part of a UAE-DRC deal flagged in a UN report on sanctions violations.

In 2025, he struck a deal with the DRC government for “tightening tax collection and cracking down on cross-border smuggling—particularly in the copper and cobalt-rich south,” according to an April article in the African Report. These actions will help secure and regulate the region’s mineral sector and align with U.S. efforts to counter Chinese influence in the global minerals race—a far cry from Prince’s past dealings with Chinese entities in Africa. The situation remains volatile, with Russian PMCs long embedded in the DRC and Romanian mercenaries recently caught in the fighting.

PMCs have accrued significant power in Africa in recent years, with Russian mercenaries helping push the French military out of the Sahel in 2022-2023. With Trump back in office, Prince is positioning his approach as a quieter alternative to hard power, with the DRC as a possible testing ground. His move coincides with the Trump administration’s efforts to broker peace between the DRC and Rwanda to stabilize the region for mineral extraction.

Prince has also floated a proposal to take on Houthi rebels in Yemen, currently targeted by British, American, and Israeli strikes. He has also been involved in Israel since shortly after the October 7, 2023, attacks. One shelved proposal called for flooding Hamas tunnels in Gaza. While never executed, the initiative has inspired proposals in Gaza from other entities, including the February 2025 announcement that U.S. PMC UG Solutions and another firm will manage the strip’s Netzarim Corridor, “a checkpoint separating northern and southern Gaza,” according to Popular Resistance.org.

Other plans of his have also failed to advance. Trump’s first administration rejected Prince’s plans to replace U.S. forces in Afghanistan with contractors and arm Libyan General Khalifa Haftar as a counter to Russia, which would also help regulate migration to Europe. The latter plan later triggered an FBI investigation under Biden, and future proposals may be similarly rejected by Trump.

Yet Prince also has domestic ambitions. During Trump’s first term, he partnered with Project Veritas, an organization known for using undercover tactics and hidden cameras to target media and left-wing institutions. Prince provided espionage training and allowed the group to use his Wyoming ranch, an operation that could easily be revived or imitated.

The deportation plan tied to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, mentioned earlier, also has domestic implications. Prince’s company, 2USV, tied it to a $25 billion business plan to deploy private agents to arrest and remove 12 million undocumented migrants from the U.S. While not publicly endorsed by the White House, the plan closely mirrors Trump’s stated priorities and could divert public attention away from ICE’s efforts.

Regardless of what is adopted by the White House, the momentum behind PMCs, private intelligence networks, and related actors shows no signs of slowing. Prince’s array of plans reflects his willingness to test the boundaries of what these companies can do at home and abroad. Their ambiguous legal status makes them ideal for politically sensitive missions where plausible deniability is important.

Once peripheral, these private entities are now increasingly relevant to regime change, mineral security, and border enforcement. Prince, perhaps more than anyone, is leading the charge, though his reputation may bring more attention to his activities than either he or his clients want.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.


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John P. Ruehl
John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

THE BLACK PRINCE
ERIK PRINCE OFFERED LETHAL SERVICES TO SANCTIONED RUSSIAN MERCENARY FIRM WAGNER

Photo illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept, Getty Images

Matthew Cole, Alex Emmons April 13 2020

ERIK PRINCE, FOUNDER of the private security firm Blackwater and a Trump administration adviser, has sought in recent months to provide military services to a sanctioned Russian mercenary firm in at least two African conflicts, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts.

Prince, who is the brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, met earlier this year with a top official of Russia’s Wagner Group and offered his mercenary forces to support the firm’s operations in Libya and Mozambique, according to two people familiar with Prince’s offer.

Wagner officials said they are not interested in working with Prince, three people familiar with their decision told The Intercept.

A lawyer for Prince denied that his client met anyone from Wagner.



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The Wagner Group is a semi-private military force that operates in countries or conflicts where the Russian government seeks plausible deniability for its activities. It is often equipped and supported directly by the Russian Ministry of Defense, according to reports and experts who track Wagner’s activities. The U.S. State Department website also lists Wagner as an entity connected to the “Defense Sector of the Government of the Russian Federation.” Any business relationship between Prince and Wagner would, in effect, make the influential Trump administration adviser a subcontractor to the Russian military.

In recent years, the Russian government has deployed Wagner to several African countries, Ukraine, and Syria, where the U.S. military killed dozens of Wagner fighters in 2018 after the Russians and their Syrian allies attacked an oil facility that the United States was defending.

“Wagner Group is an instrument of Russian policy. It works under the GRU, which is the Russian military intelligence,” said Sean McFate, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former military contractor who has written about mercenaries.

In attempting to do business with Wagner, Prince may have exposed himself to legal liability.


In attempting to do business with Wagner, Prince may also have exposed himself to legal liability. In 2017, the Trump administration sanctioned Wagner, as well as its founder and head Dmitry Utkin, for having “recruited and sent soldiers to fight alongside [Russian-backed] separatists in eastern Ukraine” during the 2014 Russian invasion. The Russian government denied involvement in the invasion, even as its forces occupied and took control of Crimea, also in Ukrainian territory, in violation of international law.

The sanctions prohibit individuals or companies from providing “financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.” They also forbid anyone “to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf” of Wagner. The 2017 addition of Wagner to the sanctions list builds on a 2014 executive order signed by President Barack Obama.

“In my experience, the act of soliciting from a sanctioned party would indeed be an apparent violation,” said Brian O’Toole, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and former senior sanctions official at the Treasury Department. “Whether you make that [legal] case is an entirely separate matter,” he said, adding that pitching business to Wagner “would seem to be a fairly egregious thing to do.”




Related
The FBI Is Investigating Erik Prince for Trying to Weaponize Crop Dusters


When Prince met with Wagner leadership, he was already under federal investigation for violating arms trafficking regulations. The proposal to the Russian firm also raises questions about whether Trump administration officials authorized the meeting or were aware of Prince’s efforts to work with the group.

A former Navy SEAL who rose to prominence and notoriety as head of the private security firm Blackwater, Prince has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, serving as an unofficial adviser on military and foreign policy issues in Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. Prince was a Trump donor in 2016 and has worked to support the president politically while proposing private military solutions that would benefit his companies financially.

Early in the Trump administration, Prince proposed privatizing the war in Afghanistan and supplying Trump with a private spy service intended to circumvent the U.S. intelligence community. Neither proposal succeeded, despite having support for some of his ideas from senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

For years, Prince has tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to win military contracts with governments in Africa and the Middle East. Wagner has become an increasingly visible player in the region as Russia’s influence there has grown, allowing the country to operate under the radar at a time when “plausible deniability is more powerful than firepower,” according to McFate, the mercenary expert.

“The reason why groups like Wagner exist is that modern war is getting sneakier and mercenaries are a great way to get things done in the shadows.”


“The reason why groups like Wagner exist, and the reason why people like Erik Prince [are] succeeding, is that modern war is getting sneakier and mercenaries and groups like Wagner are a great way to get things done in the shadows,” McFate said.

Libya has been divided and in conflict since the U.S. and NATO allies removed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The United Nations and most of the international community, including the U.S, recognize the Government of National Accord in the Libyan capital Tripoli as the country’s official leaders. But the eastern portion of the country is led by strongman Khalifa Hifter, who tried last year to take Tripoli. Both sides are backed by foreign powers that have continually violated a U.N. embargo on military support. Turkey and Qatar have supported the GNA, while Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt have backed Hifter.

Last spring, Hifter’s forces, the Libyan National Army, moved to take Tripoli, but were thwarted within days. Hifter turned to Moscow and Wagner. Americans are prohibited from aiding either side of the conflict without U.S. government authorization.

At the same time, Prince sought to provide a force in Mozambique, where the government has been fighting a small insurgency over the past two years. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique flew to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August 2019. The countries signed several trade pacts, and Russia agreed to send military aid. Russian military hardware and Russian nationals working for Wagner arrived in Mozambique in September, according to news reports.

After Wagner lost more than a dozen fighters in Mozambique, Prince sent a proposal to the Russian firm offering to supply a ground force as well as aviation-based surveillance, according to documents viewed by The Intercept and a person familiar with Prince’s proposal.

Prince has also served as an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, for more than a decade. Under bin Zayed’s leadership, the UAE, a close regional ally of the U.S., has intervened militarily in several regional wars in the Middle East and Africa. A pariah during the Obama administration, Prince was taken in by the Emirati crown prince and awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to create and train a presidential guard for the royal family. He was later removed for mismanagement, among other reasons.

Prince also has ties to China. He is co-chair of Frontier Services Group, a Hong-Kong based logistics company he founded and whose largest investor is the Chinese government. The Intercept has previously reported that the U.S. government has investigated Prince for his ties to China’s intelligence service. The conflicts between Prince’s commercial interests and the goals of the many governments that retain his services have piled up as Prince has tried to sell military and mercenary capabilities around the world. FSG, for example, signed a contract for fishing rights in Mozambique around the same time Prince began exploring defense contracts there. The fishing contract has since been dissolved, according to the company.

“The conflicts of interest are deep and threaten democracy when you have a free agent going between the U.S. and its main power rivals,” said McFate. “It would never clear an intelligence community background check. This is a dangerous thing for any democracy.”

ERIK PRINCE OFFERED LETHAL SERVICES TO SANCTIONED RUSSIAN MERCENARY FIRM WAGNER

Photo illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept, Getty Images

ERIK PRINCE, FOUNDER of the private security firm Blackwater and a Trump administration adviser, has sought in recent months to provide military services to a sanctioned Russian mercenary firm in at least two African conflicts, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts.

Prince, who is the brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, met earlier this year with a top official of Russia’s Wagner Group and offered his mercenary forces to support the firm’s operations in Libya and Mozambique, according to two people familiar with Prince’s offer.

Wagner officials said they are not interested in working with Prince, three people familiar with their decision told The Intercept.

A lawyer for Prince denied that his client met anyone from Wagner.

The Wagner Group is a semi-private military force that operates in countries or conflicts where the Russian government seeks plausible deniability for its activities. It is often equipped and supported directly by the Russian Ministry of Defense, according to reports and experts who track Wagner’s activities. The U.S. State Department website also lists Wagner as an entity connected to the “Defense Sector of the Government of the Russian Federation.” Any business relationship between Prince and Wagner would, in effect, make the influential Trump administration adviser a subcontractor to the Russian military.

In recent years, the Russian government has deployed Wagner to several African countries, Ukraine, and Syria, where the U.S. military killed dozens of Wagner fighters in 2018 after the Russians and their Syrian allies attacked an oil facility that the United States was defending.

“Wagner Group is an instrument of Russian policy. It works under the GRU, which is the Russian military intelligence,” said Sean McFate, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former military contractor who has written about mercenaries.

In attempting to do business with Wagner, Prince may have exposed himself to legal liability.

In attempting to do business with Wagner, Prince may also have exposed himself to legal liability. In 2017, the Trump administration sanctioned Wagner, as well as its founder and head Dmitry Utkin, for having “recruited and sent soldiers to fight alongside [Russian-backed] separatists in eastern Ukraine” during the 2014 Russian invasion. The Russian government denied involvement in the invasion, even as its forces occupied and took control of Crimea, also in Ukrainian territory, in violation of international law.

The sanctions prohibit individuals or companies from providing “financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.” They also forbid anyone “to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf” of Wagner. The 2017 addition of Wagner to the sanctions list builds on a 2014 executive order signed by President Barack Obama.

“In my experience, the act of soliciting from a sanctioned party would indeed be an apparent violation,” said Brian O’Toole, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and former senior sanctions official at the Treasury Department. “Whether you make that [legal] case is an entirely separate matter,” he said, adding that pitching business to Wagner “would seem to be a fairly egregious thing to do.”

Related
The FBI Is Investigating Erik Prince for Trying to Weaponize Crop Dusters


When Prince met with Wagner leadership, he was already under federal investigation for violating arms trafficking regulations. The proposal to the Russian firm also raises questions about whether Trump administration officials authorized the meeting or were aware of Prince’s efforts to work with the group.

A former Navy SEAL who rose to prominence and notoriety as head of the private security firm Blackwater, Prince has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, serving as an unofficial adviser on military and foreign policy issues in Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. Prince was a Trump donor in 2016 and has worked to support the president politically while proposing private military solutions that would benefit his companies financially.

Early in the Trump administration, Prince proposed privatizing the war in Afghanistan and supplying Trump with a private spy service intended to circumvent the U.S. intelligence community. Neither proposal succeeded, despite having support for some of his ideas from senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

For years, Prince has tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to win military contracts with governments in Africa and the Middle East. Wagner has become an increasingly visible player in the region as Russia’s influence there has grown, allowing the country to operate under the radar at a time when “plausible deniability is more powerful than firepower,” according to McFate, the mercenary expert.

“The reason why groups like Wagner exist is that modern war is getting sneakier and mercenaries are a great way to get things done in the shadows.”

“The reason why groups like Wagner exist, and the reason why people like Erik Prince [are] succeeding, is that modern war is getting sneakier and mercenaries and groups like Wagner are a great way to get things done in the shadows,” McFate said.

Libya has been divided and in conflict since the U.S. and NATO allies removed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The United Nations and most of the international community, including the U.S, recognize the Government of National Accord in the Libyan capital Tripoli as the country’s official leaders. But the eastern portion of the country is led by strongman Khalifa Hifter, who tried last year to take Tripoli. Both sides are backed by foreign powers that have continually violated a U.N. embargo on military support. Turkey and Qatar have supported the GNA, while Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt have backed Hifter.

Last spring, Hifter’s forces, the Libyan National Army, moved to take Tripoli, but were thwarted within days. Hifter turned to Moscow and Wagner. Americans are prohibited from aiding either side of the conflict without U.S. government authorization.

At the same time, Prince sought to provide a force in Mozambique, where the government has been fighting a small insurgency over the past two years. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique flew to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August 2019. The countries signed several trade pacts, and Russia agreed to send military aid. Russian military hardware and Russian nationals working for Wagner arrived in Mozambique in September, according to news reports.

After Wagner lost more than a dozen fighters in Mozambique, Prince sent a proposal to the Russian firm offering to supply a ground force as well as aviation-based surveillance, according to documents viewed by The Intercept and a person familiar with Prince’s proposal.

Prince has also served as an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, for more than a decade. Under bin Zayed’s leadership, the UAE, a close regional ally of the U.S., has intervened militarily in several regional wars in the Middle East and Africa. A pariah during the Obama administration, Prince was taken in by the Emirati crown prince and awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to create and train a presidential guard for the royal family. He was later removed for mismanagement, among other reasons.

Prince also has ties to China. He is co-chair of Frontier Services Group, a Hong-Kong based logistics company he founded and whose largest investor is the Chinese government. The Intercept has previously reported that the U.S. government has investigated Prince for his ties to China’s intelligence service. The conflicts between Prince’s commercial interests and the goals of the many governments that retain his services have piled up as Prince has tried to sell military and mercenary capabilities around the world. FSG, for example, signed a contract for fishing rights in Mozambique around the same time Prince began exploring defense contracts there. The fishing contract has since been dissolved, according to the company.

“The conflicts of interest are deep and threaten democracy when you have a free agent going between the U.S. and its main power rivals,” said McFate. “It would never clear an intelligence community background check. This is a dangerous thing for any democracy.”


Matthew Cole, Alex Emmons
April 13 2020
THE INTERCEPT

EXCLUSIVE: 

DOCUMENTS REVEAL ERIK PRINCE'S $10 BILLION PLAN TO MAKE WEAPONS AND CREATE A PRIVATE ARMY IN UKRAINE

Photo Illustration By Neil Jamieson for TIME

BY SIMON SHUSTER/KYIV

TIME
JULY 7, 2021 

On the second night of his visit to Kyiv, Erik Prince had a dinner date on his agenda. A few of his Ukrainian associates had arranged to meet the American billionaire at the Vodka Grill that evening, Feb. 23, 2020. The choice of venue seemed unusual. The Vodka Grill, a since-defunct nightclub next to a KFC franchise in a rough part of town, rarely saw patrons as powerful as Prince.

As the party got seated inside a private karaoke room on the second floor, Igor Novikov, who was then a top adviser to Ukraine’s President, remembers feeling a little nervous. He had done some reading about Blackwater, the private military company Prince had founded in 1997, and he knew about the massacre its troops had perpetrated during the U.S. war in Iraq. Coming face to face that night with the world’s most prominent soldier of fortune, Novikov remembers thinking: “What does this guy want from us?”

It soon became clear that Prince wanted a lot from Ukraine. According to interviews with close associates and confidential documents detailing his ambitions, Prince hoped to hire Ukraine’s combat veterans into a private military company. Prince also wanted a big piece of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, including factories that make engines for fighter jets and helicopters. His full plan, dated June 2020 and obtained exclusively by TIME this spring, includes a “roadmap” for the creation of a “vertically integrated aviation defense consortium” that could bring $10 billion in revenues and investment.

The audacity of the proposal fit with Prince’s record as a businessman. For nearly a quarter century, the former Navy SEAL has been a pioneer in the private military industry, raising armies in the Middle East and Africa, training commandos at his base in North Carolina and deploying security forces around the world for the State Department and the CIA. Under the Trump Administration, Prince’s family—a powerful clan of right-wing Republican donors from Michigan—saw their influence rise. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, was appointed Secretary of Education, while Prince himself leveraged contacts in the White House to chase major deals around the world.

The ones he pursued in Ukraine were among the most ambitious of his long career. But with Trump out of office, the Ukrainian government has slowed the process and invited more competition for the assets Prince coveted. “Had it been another four years of Trump, Erik would probably be closing the deal,” says Novikov, one of its lead Ukrainian negotiators.

Erik Prince walks to a closed-door House Intelligence Committee meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 30, 2017.
Aaron P. Bernstein—Bloomberg/Getty Images

This account of Prince’s ambitions in Ukraine is based on interviews with seven sources, including current and former U.S. and Ukrainian officials as well as people who worked directly with Prince to try to realize his aspirations in Ukraine. Those business plans, which have not been previously reported, were confirmed by four of the sources on both sides of the negotiations, all of whom recalled meeting in person with Prince last year to discuss them. The documents describe a series of ventures that would give Prince a pivotal role in Ukraine’s military industry and its ongoing conflict with Russia, which has taken more than 14,000 lives since it began seven years ago.

The documents detail several previously unreported ventures that Prince and his partners wanted the Ukrainian government to approve. One proposal would create a new private military company that would draw personnel from among the veterans of the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine. Another deal would build a new munitions factory in Ukraine, while a third would consolidate Ukraine’s leading aviation and aerospace firms into a consortium that could compete with “the likes of Boeing and Airbus.”

At least one of Prince’s offers to Ukraine appeared to be in line with U.S. geopolitical interests. As the Wall Street Journal first reported in Nov. 2019, Prince has been competing against a Chinese firm to buy a Ukrainian factory called Motor Sich, which produces advanced aircraft engines. China sought those engines to develop its air force. The U.S., concerned about the rapid growth of the Chinese military, has long urged Ukraine not to complete the sale. Prince emerged as the American alternative, offering to save the factory from China’s clutches.

But the Ukrainians had serious concerns about working with Prince, according to three people involved in the negotiations. Prince’s choice of allies in Kyiv—two men with ties to Russia—raised particular alarm. His Ukrainian business partner is Andriy Artemenko, who made headlines in 2017 by offering the Trump Administration a “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine that envisioned ways for the U.S. to lift sanctions against Russia. Another Prince ally in Kyiv was Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator whom the U.S. has accused of being an “active Russian agent.” Both Artemenko and Derkach worked to advance Prince’s business ventures in Ukraine last year.

“We had to wonder: Is this the best sort of partnership we can get from the Americans? This group of shady characters working for a close ally of Trump?” says Novikov, the former aide to Ukraine’s president. “It felt like the worst America had to offer.” Those concerns only heightened when, at a pivotal moment in negotiations, one of Prince’s associates proferred in writing a “participation offer” that Novikov considered an attempted bribe.

As the deals ran into resistance from the government in Ukraine, Prince’s allies faced bigger problems in New York City, where both Artemenko and Derkach are now under criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment on the investigation, which is reportedly focused on whether the two men were involved in a suspected Russian plot to sway the 2020 presidential election.


Prince does not appear to be a focus of that investigation. But Artemenko tells TIME that federal investigators have questioned him about his relationship with Prince. In interviews with TIME in April and May, both Derkach and Artemenko denied wrongdoing and described the investigation as part of a political witch hunt against Trump’s allies. Prince did not respond to numerous requests for comment, including a detailed list of questions about the documents outlining his proposals for Ukraine.

Andriy Artemenko speaks during an interview with Reuters in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 21, 2017.
Valentyn Ogirenko—REUTERS

Among the guests at the Vodka Grill was Prince’s business partner, Artemenko, a tall, clean-shaven lobbyist in his early 50s. Artemenko says he has worked with Prince in the air-cargo industry for at least six years, transporting everything from weapons to vaccines around the world. Born and raised in Kyiv, he now resides mostly in the Washington area. In text messages obtained by TIME, he refers to Prince as “the boss.”

Their relationship began not long after Prince emerged from the Blackwater scandal of 2007. That fall, a group of Prince’s soldiers-for-hire shot up a crowded square in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians and wounding 20 others. Several of the gunmen were sentenced to decades in U.S. prisons for their roles in the massacre. (Trump pardoned four of them in his final weeks in office.) Prince’s testimony in Congress about the incident drove a national debate about the privatization of war, turning him, at the age of 38, into the defiant face of the modern-day mercenary.

In the wake of those killings, Blackwater lost a $1 billion contract to guard U.S. diplomats and officials in Iraq. But the company rebranded and continued to thrive. The Obama Administration granted major contracts to Prince’s firm to provide security in conflict zones. Prince’s interests expanded well beyond the military sector. He traded oil and minerals in Africa. He assembled a private army for his friend, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. He prepared a force in Somalia to combat pirates in the Gulf of Aden. He helped train a hit squad for the CIA. When Trump took office, Prince called on the new Administration to privatize the war effort in Afghanistan, publicly pitching a plan that would let contractors handle many of the U.S. military’s functions.

Over the years, one of Prince’s most reliable lines of business has been wartime logistics: moving people and supplies into areas of conflict. Starting in 2006, the aviation arm of Blackwater air-dropped food and weapons for U.S. troops on the front lines in Afghanistan. “If you need to transport stuff in and out of a war zone, you’re not going to call UPS,” says a person familiar with Prince’s business operations. “His company does that.”

After working as a cargo broker in the 2000s, Artemenko had founded his own transport company in 2010, AirTrans LLC, which frequently flew cargo for Prince’s operation, he tells TIME. In 2015, Artemenko says, AirTrans officially became a part of Prince’s company, Frontier Resource Group.

Around that time, Artemenko says, the partners began discussing a venture in Ukraine’s weapons industry. Russia and Ukraine had been at war since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014, leading the one-time allies to stop selling weapons to each other. The hardware Russia needed most were engines for its helicopters and fighter jets, many of which are still produced at Soviet-era plants in eastern Ukraine.

Apart from the potential to earn billions of dollars in profit, Artemenko says he saw these factories as a way to broker an end to the war in Ukraine. “The Russians need the full complex of aviation technology, starting with the engines,” he says. “This is a reason to force them to the negotiating table and make a peace deal. We can say: ‘OK, you need these spare parts, engines and everything else from Ukraine? Fine, but we want a deal for [eastern Ukraine], and then we want an agreement on Crimea.'”

The idea did not get much traction. Ukrainian officials recoiled at the notion of lifting their arms embargo against Russia in the middle of a war. Another one of Artemenko’s peace plans gained notoriety in 2017, when a draft of it reportedly landed on the desk of Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. That plan, like the first, went nowhere.

Around the same time, Prince held a meeting on an island in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian official. The Washington Post reported their aim was to create a “back channel” from the Kremlin to the White House, an allegation both men denied. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report published in April 2019 devoted a few pages to the Seychelles meeting. According to the report, Prince told his Russian interlocutor that he was “looking forward to a new era of cooperation and conflict resolution.”

By the time Prince set his sights on the Ukrainian military industry, the nation’s conflict with Russia had settled into a kind of stalemate, with sporadic shelling and sniper fire along the front lines. Peace talks had stalled, and Ukraine’s government was increasingly desperate for a way out of the impasse.

The Trump Administration did little to help. Trump’s priority in Ukraine was not to make peace; it was to advance his own political fortunes. Amid his campaign for re-election, Trump asked Ukraine to investigate his opponent, Joe Biden, and held up military aid to Ukraine as a means of pressure. The campaign of coercion caused a breakdown in U.S.-Ukrainian relations.

Some advisers to President Volodymyr Zelensky saw Prince as a way to repair the damage. They wanted him to help arrange a meeting with someone in Trump’s inner circle, ideally Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, says Novikov, who was Ukraine’s liaison to the Americans at the time.

Prince was unwilling to make that connection, says a person familiar with his thinking on the matter. “Erik made it very clear that he didn’t have the keys to Trump’s White House, and that he didn’t want to play that game.”

As an alternative, Prince’s team offered to line up an American lobbyist for Ukraine named Joseph Schmitz. A former Blackwater executive, Schmitz had been a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016 and had contacts in the Administration. He was ready to represent Ukraine for a fee of $500,000 plus expenses, according to a proposed lobbying agreement obtained by TIME. (Schmitz did not respond to emails seeking comment.) Ukrainian officials received that agreement early last year from Artemenko’s lobbying firm but did not sign it.

Prince had sought some local assistance of his own. Among the people he met with in Kyiv was Derkach, the Ukrainian member of parliament whom the U.S. later accused of being a Russian agent.

Derkach, who confirmed to TIME that the meeting took place, was well positioned to help Prince understand the terrain. He had worked in Ukraine’s aviation sector after graduating from an elite university for spies in Moscow, the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. In the early 2010s, when Derkach served as an adviser to Ukraine’s prime minister, one of his tasks had been to develop the aviation and machine-building sectors of the nation’s economy.

Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach at a news conference in Kyiv on Oct. 9, 2019.
Gleb Garanich—Reuters

Derkach says he was intrigued by Prince’s vision for these industries. One major advantage Prince brought to the table was his list of contacts in the developing world. He had worked for many years in the Middle East and Africa, dealing with warlords and autocrats who could become new clients for Ukrainian weapons and aircraft. The main flaw in the plan, Derkach says, was the cooperation it required from Ukraine’s local factory bosses and oligarchs, who control much of the military-industrial complex.

“That’s not so much an issue with Erik,” he says. “It’s a problem of corruption in Ukraine, where you have the factory directors who do not want to sign documents and give up power.” Derkach recalled telling Prince: “‘You’ve worked everywhere. But Ukraine is special. It’s very hard to get any traction here. You have to gather a serious team of people who will move the process along.'”

Derkach says he did not join this team, and declines to say whether he was ever paid for the advice he gave Prince. But after their meeting in Kyiv, Derkach began urging Ukrainian authorities to support the deal Prince wanted. In March 2020, he invited Novikov, the presidential adviser, to a meeting to discuss the plans. “Derkach said, ‘We already have everyone on board, and still the deal is stalling,'” Novikov recalls. Derkach wanted to know who in the President’s administration was standing in Prince’s way. “That was the only thing he wanted to discuss with me,” Novikov says.

In the early summer of 2020, Ukraine moved to cement its partnership with Prince, whose intentions had become far more detailed and ambitious. In one message to Ukrainian officials, Artemenko provided Prince’s passport information along with a summary of their agenda for an upcoming trip. In a follow-up message, he noted Prince would be in Kyiv for several days during the week of June 15, 2020, and requested meetings with senior officials in the defense and intelligence agencies, adding cryptically: “There will be no official calls to government officials, as this visit is strictly private and apolitical.”

Arriving in Kyiv on a chartered flight from Minsk, Prince held a meeting that week with Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, according to messages obtained by TIME between the people who arranged Prince’s travels. (Yermak confirmed to TIME that the meeting took place but declined to discuss it in detail.)

Things appeared to move quickly from there. The President’s office put Prince in touch with a law firm in Kyiv that frequently works for the Ukrainian government. The firm prepared a legal framework for completing the deal Prince wanted. The work was complex, especially when it came to acquiring Motor Sich, says the person familiar with Prince’s thinking.

The factory had been privatized in the 1990s, during Ukraine’s chaotic transition to capitalism. In 2016 and 2017, Chinese investors bought up shares in the factory from its private owners, paying an estimated $700 million for control of Motor Sich. They were not expected to give it up without a fight in the courts. So the lawyers had to find legal grounds for Ukraine to take control of the asset before re-selling it to a new investor. Their plan relied on a regulatory snag: Ukraine’s anti-trust agency had not granted approval to the Chinese investment. “It’s this weird situation where the Chinese bought the asset, never received approval for it, and it’s basically standing still,” says the person familiar with Prince’s thinking. That could allow the Ukrainian government to say: “‘We’re going to take control of the asset because it’s basically not being properly managed,’” the person says. “In a nutshell, that’s the argument.”

In the weeks after Prince’s visit, his associates prepared two versions of a detailed business plan and sent them to officials in Zelensky’s office. The first, dated June 23, 2020, stated that the acquisition of Motor Sich would require $50 million to purchase a minority stake, and another $950 million to buy 76% of the factory. The money was meant to come from Windward Capital, an investment vehicle that Prince has reportedly used in the past.

A helicopter assembly shop of JSC Motor Sich, Zaporizhzhia, southeastern Ukraine on May 18, 2021.
Dmytro Smoliyenko— Getty Images

Another business plan for Ukraine’s military industry, dated June 29, 2020, provided new details and incentives for the government to participate. It described a planned takeover of Antonov, the state-owned airplane manufacturer, by replacing its CEO with an executive from Artemenko’s company. The proposal also called for an “ultimatum” to be issued to the Chinese investors in Motor Sich, who would be forced to either accept an “immediate sale” or face the “loss of value,” the plan stated. “If Chinese remain uncooperative,” the Ukrainian government should take over the factory and transfer control to new investors, the document says.

Another element of the business plan described a partnership between Ukraine’s main intelligence service and Lancaster 6, a private military company that has previously been involved with Prince’s deals in Africa and the Middle East. This partnership, which required approval from Ukraine’s parliament, would build a “state-of-the-art training center” and a “specialized services enterprise”—industry jargon for a private military operation—that would be involved in Ukraine’s “strategic planning, logistics, risk management, security forces training and consulting concerning security risks,” according to the plan. (The head of Lancaster 6, a longtime Prince associate named Christiaan Durrant, told TIME he was not aware of any such documents and asked for a copy; after being sent one, he stopped responding.)

Three of the projects described in the documents also include a “participation offer,” or a cut of the yearly profits. The participation offers listed in the document would be worth a total of around $35 million per year if the plan were to be executed. (The documents do not make clear who would get this money or why.) Novikov, who negotiated with Prince and studied the plan closely while serving as a presidential adviser, says he understood this as a proposal for kickbacks to government officials. “It looked like a bribe,” he says.

Paul Pelletier, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, agreed that the reference to “participation offers” looks suspicious. It would be likely to cause “alarm bells,” he says, at the Justice Department, where Pelletier served for years as a senior official overseeing foreign bribery cases. “On its face, the terms suggest some sort of kickback payments to government contracting officials—a definite no-no,” says Pelletier, who reviewed the document at TIME’s request. “No money or offers of money can flow to government officials, period.”

Artemenko insists that he and Prince never acted corruptly in their dealings, in Ukraine or elsewhere. “We never paid a bribe at the table,” he tells TIME. “We don’t want to do anything wrong. Only the transparent and legal way.” (Asked directly about the purpose of the participation offers, Artemenko’s lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, declined to comment.)

Prince’s lawyer, Matthew Schwartz, did not respond to a detailed list of questions from TIME, including specific questions about the participation offers and the allegation that they referred to kickbacks.

As Trump’s chances in the presidential race began to look less certain in the fall of 2020, so did the prospects for Prince and his contacts in Ukraine.

In September, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Derkach, accusing him of being an “active Russian agent” involved in a plot to help Trump win a second term. About a month later, four FBI agents showed up at Artemenko’s home in the Washington area, Artemenko recalls. They wanted to know about his work in Ukraine, and his relationships with Prince, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others. “They asked me about my relationship with Erik, how we met, where we met,” Artemenko says. “Normal questions.”

Meanwhile, the dilemma with Motor Sich has only gotten more complex. The Chinese investors in the factory filed a $3.5 billion claim in December 2020 at an international court of arbitration, claiming that Ukraine’s decision to block the sale was illegal. The Ukrainian government responded by imposing sanctions against the Chinese investors, one of whom called the move “an abuse of state power and the suppression of normal business activity.”

Under the Biden Administration, the U.S. does not seem likely to throw its weight behind Prince’s projects in Ukraine. “The U.S. has not been very pro-Erik,” says the person familiar with his thinking. In a statement to TIME, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. supports Ukraine’s efforts to block the sale of Motor Sich to the Chinese firm, but avoided taking a position on who should own the factory or saying anything about Prince.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to the President of Ukraine in Kyiv on Dec. 4, 2019.
Paolo Verzone—VU for TIME

That leaves the status of Prince’s plans for Ukraine unclear. Yermak, the presidential chief of staff, says the government intends to nationalize Motor Sich and keep it under state control. Private investors, including Prince and his partners, would be welcome to bid on a stake in the factory through a competitive tender, Yermak told TIME in an interview in April. “We are interested in working with all our partners,” he says. “We are interested in there being fairness.”

At that time, Prince’s business partner said the two were still interested in bidding for the factory. “We are ready to show the money and explain the plan,” Artemenko says.

With reporting by Barbara Maddux and Madeline Roache

Blackwater founder Erik Prince accused of helping evade U.N. Libya sanctions


By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Erik Prince, the private security executive and supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump, “at the very least” helped evade an arms embargo on Libya, according to excerpts from a United Nations report seen by Reuters.



FILE PHOTO: Erik Prince arrives for the New York Young Republican Club Gala at The Yale Club of New York City in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., November 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo

Independent U.N. sanctions monitors accused Prince of proposing a private military operation - known as ‘Project Opus’ - to Libya’s eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar in April 2019 and helping procure three aircraft for it.

Matthew Schwartz, a lawyer for Prince, denied the accusations in the annual U.N. report, which was submitted on Thursday to the Security Council Libya sanctions committee and is due to be made public next month.

“Mr. Prince had no involvement in any alleged military operation in Libya in 2019, or at any other time,” Schwartz said in a statement. “He did not provide weapons, personnel, or military equipment to anyone in Libya.”

The U.N. monitors wrote in the report that they had “identified that Erik Prince made a proposal for the operation to Khalifa Haftar in Cairo, Egypt on, or about, 14 April 2019.” Haftar was in Cairo at the time to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

“Mr. Prince was not in Egypt at any point in 2019 – as travel records confirm – and has never met or spoken to Mr. Haftar. This alleged meeting is fiction and never took place,” Schwartz said.

The report described Prince’s proposal as “a well-funded private military company operation” designed to provide Haftar with armed assault helicopters, intelligence surveillance aircraft, maritime interdiction, drones, and cyber, intelligence and targeting capabilities.

“The Project Opus plan also included a component to kidnap or terminate individuals regarded as high value targets in Libya,” the monitors wrote.

Libya initially descended into chaos after the NATO-backed overthrow of leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 when the U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo. The country has been divided since 2014 between the internationally recognized government in its west and Haftar’s eastern-based forces.

PROJECT FAILURES

The U.N. monitors reported that the air and maritime component of ‘Project Opus’ had to be aborted in June 2019 after Haftar was unimpressed with the aircraft procured for the operations and “made threats against the team management.”

A South African team leader evacuated 20 private military operatives to Malta on inflatable boats, the monitors said.

“Project Opus private military operatives were deployed to Libya for a second time in April and May 2020 in order to locate and destroy high value targets,” said the U.N. monitors, but the operation again had to be aborted due to security concerns.

The rival Libyan administrations agreed a ceasefire in October, but have not pulled back their forces. Haftar is supported by the United Arab Emirates and Russia, while the government is backed by Turkey. Egypt had backed Haftar, but Sisi last week offered his country’s support to Libya’s interim government.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has demanded an end to foreign interference in Libya.

Prince - the brother of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos - founded the private security firm Blackwater and was a pioneer in private military contracting after U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003.

Blackwater sparked international outrage in 2007 when its employees shot and killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. One of the employees was convicted of murder in December 2018 and three others were convicted of manslaughter. Trump pardoned the four men in December last year.


Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Sonya Hepinstall

THE BLACK PRINCE OF PRIVATE SECURITY SERVICES

Exclusive: Trump supporter Prince reaches deal with Congo to help secure mineral wealth

By Jessica Donati and Sonia Rolley

April 17, 2025
REUTERS


Erik Prince arrives for New York Young Republican Club Gala in New York City, New York, U.S., December 10, 2022. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo

Summary

Blackwater founder struck agreement before M23 rebel advance

Focus on boosting tax collection, cutting cross-border smuggling

Implementation talks come as US, Congo explore mineral partnership

April 17 (Reuters) - Prominent Trump supporter Erik Prince has agreed to help Democratic Republic of Congo secure and tax its vast mineral wealth, according to two sources close to the private security executive, a Congolese government official and two diplomats.
The agreement, aimed at reaping more revenue from an industry marred by smuggling and corruption, was reached before Rwanda-backed M23 rebels launched a major offensive in January that has seen them seize eastern Congo's two largest cities.

The discussions now on implementing the deal with Prince come as the U.S. and Congo explore a broader deal on critical minerals partnerships, after Congo pitched a minerals-for-security deal to U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.
Prince founded Blackwater before renaming the private military company and selling it in 2010 after several employees were indicted on charges of unlawfully killing Iraqi civilians. The men were convicted but later pardoned by Trump during his first term.
The Trump administration has not said how the U.S. might contribute to security in Congo as part of any minerals deal. Analysts and former U.S. officials have said leaning on security contractors such as Prince could be an option.
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A Congolese government source told Reuters that any agreement between Congo and Prince would need to be reviewed in light of the push for a deal with the U.S.
The security deal was agreed with the finance ministry, and Prince's advisers will focus on improving tax collection and reducing cross-border smuggling of minerals, the two sources close to Prince said. There were no plans to deploy security contractors to areas of active conflict, the sources said.
Prince declined to comment through a spokesperson. The Congo presidency did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. State Department declined to comment.

INITIAL FOCUS ON COPPER MINES, SOURCE SAYS

Democratic Republic of Congo has vast reserves of copper, cobalt, lithium and coltan - a mineral used widely in smartphones, computers and electric vehicles - but has been plagued for decades by violence in its eastern region.


The agreement between Congo and Prince initially involved a plan to deploy contractors to Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and the largest city in eastern Congo. But Goma is now under M23 control and that plan has been put on hold. M23 controls tracts of mineral-rich territory.
A source close to the Congolese government told Reuters an initial deployment of Prince's advisers was expected to start in the south, far from the area controlled by M23 and its allies.
"If you just look at Katanga, if you look at Kolwezi down just off the Zambian-Congo border, they claim that there's like $40 million a month in lost revenue of what's going out and what's coming in," the source said.
A diplomatic source also told Reuters the first stage of Prince's effort in Congo would focus on securing mines and tax revenues in copper-producing Katanga province.

One of the sources close to Prince said advisers were expected to deploy with technical experts from a company specialised in testing and inspecting commodities. The advisers would initially target larger mines and expand as revenue collection improved.
The source did not provide details on how the advisers would tackle corruption in the sector that has long drained revenue that would otherwise flow to the state.

A source in the office of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said an agreement in principle had been signed with Prince, but the details on where and how many advisers would be deployed remained to be established.
HISTORY OF WORKING IN AFRICA
Prince has worked in Africa for over a decade, initially providing logistics for oil and mining companies working in remote corners of the continent.
A number of Prince-controlled companies have operated in Congo since 2015. They have been involved in trucking and have also sought to get involved in the minerals sector.
The two sources close to Prince said the new agreement followed years of talks over how to improve Congo's control over its mineral resources.
Prince previously proposed sending thousands of contractors to the eastern region during talks with Kinshasa in 2023, a U.N. expert panel reported that year. Those discussions did not ultimately lead to a deal.
Congo has long accused Rwanda of plundering minerals from the region, a claim supported by independent entities including the United Nations and the nonprofit Global Witness. Rwanda denies that.
That loss of mining revenue is one of the key concerns that Prince's team will seek to address, one of the sources close to Prince said.
The goal is to ensure "that extraction industries and others are operating transparently, and that their production and revenues is properly distributed in accordance with the Congolese mining code", the source said.
United Nations and Western governments say Rwanda has provided arms and troops to the ethnic Tutsi-led M23.
Rwanda has denied backing M23. It says its military has acted in self-defence against Congo's army and a Rwandan militia operating in east Congo that was founded by perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

Reporting by Jessica Donati and Sonia Rolley; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Alison Williams

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