A Hong Kong-based security company founded by Blackwater founder Erik
Prince (and brother of Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos) is again operating in southern Iraq, according to BuzzFeed News reports.
Prince,
whose private mercenary group Blackwater won U.S. government contracts
after 9/11 only to get kicked out of Iraq after killing 14 unarmed
citizens during the Iraq War. After Iraq booted Blackwater from the country, the company hanged its name to Academi. Prince later sold the company, and onvictions and lawsuits followed. Prince reportedly founded the logistics company
Frontier Services Group (FSG) in 2014 and has since expanded it into
Africa, China, Southeast Asia and Dubai.
BuzzFeed reports that FSG's
biggest investor is the state-owned Chinese company, CITIC. To many, Prince no longer appears to be operating in the interests of U.S. national security. Prince’s record has remained a point of tension for the company-- when
FSG announced it was shifting from solely logistics to security projects
a couple of years ago, two board members resigned,
Although FSG
has not publicly acknowledged that it is operating in Iraq, an FSG
subsidiary—Frontier Logistics Consultancy DMCC—reportedly registered
with Iraq’s Ministry of Trade in February 2018, and a source told
BuzzFeed its office in Iraq was in Basra. FSG, in its latest annual
report, reportedly mentioned that they had new offices open in the
Middle East—but did not specify the countries where the offices were
located.
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