Documents acquired by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies prove that a Sudanese mining company controlled by the late Prigozhin, Meroe Gold, purchased industrial equipment from a Chinese supplier in 2017.
Banks JP Morgan and HSBC unknowingly handled payments for companies in Africa that were controlled by the late Wagner Group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. This is what emerges from a report by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ads), a US think tank, reported by the newspaper “Financial Times”. Documents acquired by C4ads prove that a Sudanese mining company controlled by Prigozhin, Meroe Gold, purchased industrial equipment from a Chinese supplier in 2017. An invoice from August of that year shows that JP Morgan was used as an intermediary in the payment. Another invoice from the same year indicates that Meroe Gold purchased diesel generators and other components from a Chinese company and paid for them through Hang Seng Bank, part of the HSBC Group.
The Financial Times said there was no evidence that the two banks were aware that the transactions involved front entities linked to the Wagner Group. At the time of these transactions, Meroe Gold was not yet subject to sanctions by the United States: it only became so in 2018. C4ads highlighted that, as the documents acquired demonstrate, Prigozhin was able to assert the presence of the Wagner Group on the African continent by exploiting the legal financial system to his advantage. “To facilitate its exploitation of natural resources, the internationally sanctioned organization relied on a network of financial services and transportation networks to move supplies and generate revenue,” the research center explained. Prigozhin died in a plane crash during a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg on August 23, 2023. The explosion of the plane, which crashed in the Russian region of Tver, was probably caused by an explosive device on board, according to media reports. Prigozhin’s death came exactly two months after his attempted uprising against Russia’s military and political leadership on June 23, 2023.
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