NAIROBI, Kenya – In response to accusations by United Nations investigators of violating an international arms embargo, Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater Worldwide and a leading supporter of Donald J. Trump, has no role in a $ 80 mercenary operation million in Libya in 2019. And he insisted that the key findings of the UN inquiry were completely wrong.
“Erik Prince did not violate any arms embargo and had nothing to do with sending planes, drones, weapons or people to Libya,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
A confidential report submitted to the UN Security Council on Thursday, obtained by The Times, accuses Mr. Prince that he violated the decade-old arms embargo on Libya by participating in a fatal mercenary operation in 2019 that overthrew a powerful Libyan commander in his quest to overthrow Libya’s internationally backed government.
Mr. Prince, who was investigated internationally after his Blackwater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, has been a prominent supporter of Mr. Trump. His sister, Betsy DeVos, was mr. Trump’s education secretary.
Prince spoke by telephone and challenged the key allegations in the UN report, voiced criticism and severed ties with the former president. He said he met Mr. Trump only met once as president during a Veterans Day rally, and never discussed Libya or any other policy issue with him.
“I was not a foreign policy adviser to the president,” he added, apparently referring to news media articles that used the description. ‘So stop typing me like that. It is not true.”
Mr. Prince and his lawyer admitted that they did not see the UN report or the many specific allegations in it, which included dozens of pages of PowerPoint offers, contracts, bank transfers, text messages and other evidence. And Mr. Prince did not provide any hard evidence to counter the allegations.
Gregg Smith, who between 2014 and 2016 with Mr. Prince worked and is quoted in the report as saying that the mercenary operation described by investigators in Libya has many similarities with a project Prince led in 2014 in South Sudan.
“These are the same people and the same plane,” he said. Smith said.
Prince’s broad denial increases the importance of the confidential report, which is currently before the Security Council and is likely to be made public next month. The report opens the possibility that Mr. Prince could be punished with a freeze on assets and a travel ban, although such United States rarely imposes such sanctions.
A central accusation of the report is that Mr. Prince presented the $ 80 million mercenary scheme to Libyan military commander Khalifa Hifter during a meeting in Cairo in April 2019, just days after Mr. .
Mr. Prince insisted it was impossible. “I never met General Hifter,” he said. ‘Was not in Egypt in 2019. Never talked to the man. ‘
The report states that the meeting coincides with a sudden change in the Trump administration’s approach to Libya.
A day after the meeting described in the report, on April 15, Mr. Trump a call to Mr. Hifter did and publicly acknowledged his “important role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources”, the White House said in a statement at the time.
Four days later, Trump surprised his associates by openly endorsing Hifter’s advance on Tripoli, which amounts to a drastic turnaround in US policy toward Libya. Prior to that, the United States had supported the government that Mr. Hifter tried to overthrow.
Prince says he only tried to influence the president through newspaper reports, where in 2017 he suggested in The Financial Times a private border force to stop illegal migration from Libya and in The Wall Street Journal proposed a force of private contractors has to fight in Afghanistan. . “I wish he had listened,” Mr Prince said. “I wish he had listened to the advice I gave him in the articles.”
Mr. Prince also said he had never discussed Libya with two other figures near Trump: Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law and adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the former foreign minister.
The mercenary operation launched by the UN report to Mr. Prince linked, is just the latest episode to highlight the role of foreign powers in the protracted, chaotic war that engulfed Libya after its longtime dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was expelled during the Arab period. Spring 2011.
The United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Russia, Egypt and other countries turned themselves in the fight and sent money, fighters and powerful weapons to influence the future of the oil-rich North African nation.
Mr. Hifter, who handles most of eastern Libya, is arguably the country’s most powerful commander. He faced critical international criticism in April 2019 when he launched his campaign to capture Tripoli with support from the Emirates and later from Russian mercenaries.
UN investigators say a team of 20 British, Australian, South African and American mercenaries was secretly deployed to Libya in June 2019 as part of the $ 80 million scheme to recruit Mr. Hifter to help, then in his campaign to capture Tripoli.
The mercenaries arrived with planes and military boats smuggled from South Africa and Europe, and offered to form a hit group to kill Mr. Detect and kill Hifter’s main enemy commander.
But the operation hit an obstacle when Jordan refused to sell U.S.-manufactured Cobra helicopter gunships to the mercenaries, and then it became a disaster when a dispute with Mr. Hifter forced the mercenaries to flee Libya across the Mediterranean from Libya.
At that point, Mr. Prince, he was in the mountains of Wyoming and later traveling to Alaska and Canada with his son.
“It is difficult to conduct a mercenary operation from the northern Yukon area,” he said.
According to the UN report, Prince transferred three of his own planes to Libya for the use of Mr. Hifter.
Investigators say a paper route led them from Prince-controlled companies in Bermuda, Bulgaria and the United States that owned the planes to the Libyan battlefield.
Mr. Prince stumbled in his outline of his companies. Prince’s lawyer contradicted him when Prince said he owned Bridgeporth, a British recording company used by UN investigators to provide cover for Prince’s military ventures.
He does not know and does not care who bought the planes that ended up in Libya.
And he said he refused to cooperate with United Nations investigators – a group of six people who are knowledgeable about illegal weapons and financial transfers formally known as the panel of experts – because he believes they intends to smear him out. “There is no proper process,” he said. “It’s an ax.”
A Western official said UN investigators had already formally imposed sanctions on a friend and former business partner of Mr. Prince recommended for his share in the mercenary scheme.
Now Mr. Prince, in at least a fight for the reputation of the United Nations, said he was a victim of a shadowy and mysterious image he himself had long cultivated.
“My name has become a cliché for people who like to weave conspiracy theories together,” he said. Prince said. ‘And when they throw in my name, it always attracts attention. And it’s pretty dull sick. ‘