The former Navy Seal Erik Prince who founded the private security group Blackwater is pitching to run logistics for Chinese mining and energy companies in Africa. Blackwater became controversial for its role providing private security in Iraq.
Prince is now chairman of Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group, which is backed by Citic Group, the Chinese state-owned investment company, and Hong Kong entreprenuer, Johnson Ko Chun Shun.
He remains the largest individual shareholder having sold an east African aviation start-up company he owned to what was essentially a shell company.
China builds schools, hospitals and railways as a quid pro quo for getting access to raw materials without interfering in local politics and is expected to invest up to $1tn over the next decade in Africa.
This comes on top of the billions it has put in to finance mines, power plants and other infrastructure, which have helped it generate trade of $185bn with the continent.
Defending Blackwater’s record, Prince said its tactics were sanctioned by the US government and that ultimately it was made a political scapegoat for wider errors in an unpopular war.
“Nearly being killed in a plane incident about a year and a half ago as we were up looking at a mine site in Burkina Faso, I thought if this is the best that is available here and [people] are going to spend a lot of money building a mine, there’s got to be a better way than this,” he told beyondbrics.
The incident in question was an accident rather than an attack of some kind and Prince plays down the security aspect of the new company. “When you look at the spend of a $3bn mine, think of the costs of logistics in that – our ability to compress some of those costs for our customers and still make very good money in the process, that’s what we’re about.”
His aim is to build a multi-billion dollar “austere logisitics” company, with aviation to transport people, goods and equipment under either scheduled or emergency conditions and to conduct surveillance.
Source: FT