{"id":12602,"date":"2014-01-15T11:17:42","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T11:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12602"},"modified":"2014-01-15T11:17:42","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T11:17:42","slug":"ex-blackwater-chief-looks-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12602","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Blackwater chief looks East"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blackwater\"<\/a>The former Navy Seal Erik Prince\u00a0who founded the private security group Blackwater is pitching to run logistics for Chinese mining and energy companies in Africa.\u00a0Blackwater became controversial for its role providing private security in Iraq.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He remains the largest individual shareholder having sold an east African aviation start-up company he owned to what was essentially a shell company.<\/p>\n

China builds schools, hospitals and railways as a quid pro quo for getting access to raw materials without interfering in local politics and\u00a0is expected to invest up to $1tn over the next decade in Africa.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Defending Blackwater\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cNearly 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\u2019s got to be a better way than this,\u201d he told beyondbrics.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cWhen you look at the spend of a $3bn mine, think of the costs of logistics in that \u2013 our ability to compress some of those costs for our customers and still make very good money in the process, that\u2019s what we\u2019re about.\u201d<\/p>\n

His aim is to build a multi-billion dollar \u201caustere logisitics\u201d company, with aviation to transport people, goods and equipment under either scheduled or emergency conditions and to conduct surveillance.<\/p>\n

Source: FT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The former Navy Seal Erik Prince\u00a0who founded the private security group Blackwater is pitching to run logistics for Chinese mining and energy companies in Africa.\u00a0Blackwater 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 … Continue reading “Ex-Blackwater chief looks East”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[854,3094,144,8002,2471],"class_list":["post-12602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-africa","tag-blackwater","tag-china","tag-eric-prince","tag-iraq"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/blackwater.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12604,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12602\/revisions\/12604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}