Blackwater vied for work in Sudan despite U.S. sanctions, investigation shows

[Robbien]

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – The security contractor Blackwater Worldwide tried for two years to secure lucrative defense business in Southern Sudan while the country was under U.S. economic sanctions, according to current and former U.S. officials and hundreds of pages of documents reviewed by McClatchy.

The effort to drum up new business in East Africa by Blackwater owner Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who had close ties with top officials in the George W. Bush White House and the CIA, became a major element in a continuing four-year federal investigation into allegations of sanctions violations, illegal exports and bribery.

. . .

According to two former senior U.S. officials, the company headed by Prince at one point proposed a broad defense package that would have required southern Sudan to pledge as much as half its mineral wealth to pay for Blackwater's services.

Prince personally lobbied Vice President Dick Cheney to lift the sanctions on Southern Sudan, according to the documents and a former senior U.S. official. Prince's aides also helped draft a letter from Southern Sudan's leader, Salva Kiir, to President George W. Bush seeking an end to the sanctions.

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-blackwater_28nat.ART.State.Edition1.3e3c259.html

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Half of the poor country's entire resources to pay for death squads. Jeebus!

And the only penalty is Blackwater is to pay a small fine. Case closed.


More details on the case from this article:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10179/1068767-84.stm


Perhaps the most unique character in the story is Bradford Phillips, a Christian evangelical activist and former congressional aide who runs the Persecution Project Foundation, a Culpeper, Va., nonprofit that works to publicize and alleviate the plight of Sudan's Christians.

At Mr. Prince's request, Mr. Phillips called on the government of Southern Sudan and recommended Blackwater's protective services. He helped set up meetings between Mr. Kiir and Mr. Prince in Africa and Washington. The Washington session took place in November 2005 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel, a few blocks from the White House, the documents show.

Southern Sudan had emerged in 2005 as an autonomous region after a U.S.-brokered peace deal ended a 22-year war with the North. Weeks after he took the helm of the new Southern Sudan government, Mr. Kiir's predecessor, John Garang, was killed in an unexplained helicopter crash, and Blackwater's sales pitch to the Bush administration was that protecting the new leader would support U.S. policy objectives.

After negotiating a $2 million draft contract to train Mr. Kiir's personal security detail, Blackwater in early 2007 drafted a detailed second proposal, valued at more than $100 million, to equip and train the south's army. Because the south lacked ready cash, Blackwater sought 50 percent of the south's untapped mineral wealth, a former senior U.S. official said. In addition to its well-known oil and natural gas reserves, Southern Sudan has vast untapped reserves of gold, iron and diamonds.

. . .

Federal investigators, however, found evidence that Blackwater's sales campaign had violated U.S. sanctions, export control laws and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is designed to prevent U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials in return for business, according to the officials and documents.

The suspected violations included brokering for defense services without a U.S. government-approved license; transferring satellite phones and encrypted e-mail capabilities to Southern Sudanese officials; and attempting to open a joint escrow account with the south's government at a Minnesota bank.

[pundaint]

1. The law doesn't apply to hired assassins, and war criminals.

It's the defense of rogue government act, and it's a secret.

[RainDog]

2. also here in lbn from mcclatchy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4444766

[GlennWRECK]

3. Well Gee, thanks

"Federal investigators, however, found evidence that Blackwater's sales campaign had violated U.S. sanctions, export control laws and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is designed to prevent U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials in return for business, according to the officials and documents."

Go figure!