Blackwater founder expands operations in Congo

Frontier Services

13/06/2019 15:06

By Aaron Ross
    DAKAR, June 13 (Reuters) - A company run by private security
firm Blackwater's founder Erik Prince has registered a
subsidiary in Democratic Republic of Congo with a mandate to
extract minerals and timber and conduct financial operations,
corporate filings show.   
    Prince, who renamed Blackwater and sold it in 2010 after
several of its employees were indicted on unlawful killing
charges in connection with their work as U.S. government
contractors during the Iraq War, has run Hong Kong-based
Frontier Services Group (FSG)  0500.HK  since 2014. 
    FSG has close ties to the state-owned Chinese investment
company CITIC  CITIC.UL  and provides security, aviation and
logistics services to Chinese firms operating in Africa.
    FSG has owned a small Congolese trucking company called
Cheetah Logistics in Congo since 2015, but the new subsidiary,
Frontier Services Group Congo, has a more expansive mandate,
according to a filing with Congo's business registry. 
    Among its aims are "the exploration, exploitation and
commercialisation of minerals", forest logging, security,
transport, construction and "all financial, investment and
project financing operations, both public and private". 
    The filing, shows Frontier Services Group Congo was
registered on Aug. 20, 2018, and formally established on Nov.
13, 2018. 
    FSG did not respond to a request for comment. 
    In its 2018 annual report, released in April, it listed
Congo, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia as countries it had identified
for investment, in connection with China's Belt and Road global
development strategy.
    Besides his work for FSG, Prince has been pushing a plan to
deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist
president, Nicolas Maduro, sources with knowledge of the effort
told Reuters in April.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N228178
    He has also tried unsuccessfully to convince the Trump
administration to replace U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan with
security contractors.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N1WL0PO 
    FSG owns aviation companies based in Kenya and Malta and
provides security training to companies in China. It says it is
also active in more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and
Europe.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N1ZV41E 
    Prince told the Financial Times earlier this year he was
aiming to raise up to half a billion dollars through a new fund
to invest in mining metals like cobalt, copper and lithium that
are needed for electric car batteries. 
    Congo accounts for roughly 60 percent of the world's cobalt
output and is Africa's largest producer of copper. 
    Chinese companies have snapped up valuable concessions in
recent years as Western firms reduce their footprint in Congo,
which is mired by armed conflict and political instability. 
    Blackwater, which Prince founded in 1997, was contracted by
the U.S. State Department to provide security during the Iraq
War. In 2007, Blackwater employees shot and killed 17 Iraqi
civilians in Baghdad. One of the employees involved was
convicted of murder in December and three others have been
convicted of manslaughter.
    Blackwater agreed in 2010 to pay $42 million in fines for
hundreds of violations of U.S. export rules, including making
unauthorized proposals to train troops in southern Sudan. The
company now operates as Virginia-based Academi.

 (Editing by Mark Potter)
 ((Aaron.Ross@thomsonreuters.com; +221 77 569 1702;))