Prigozhin earned a quarter of a billion dollars in the Middle East and Africa

The founder of Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, could have earned $250 million in income from the activities of companies associated with him that are engaged in the extraction of natural resources in Africa and the Middle East, reports the Financial Times.

The newspaper came to such conclusions after analyzing the financial statements of Europolis, M Invest and Mercury until December 2021 (latest available data); some of the structures by that time were already under US and EU sanctions as being associated with Prigozhin. The journalists converted the proceeds and profits indicated in the documents from rubles into dollars at the current exchange rate. They did not take into account Prigozhin’s business in Russia.

Fontanka wrote in 2016 that Europolis agreed with the Syrian government to liberate the country’s oil and gas fields from militants and protect them, and in return received contracts for the extraction of a quarter of the hydrocarbons received from them. The company found itself under US sanctions in 2018, and a year later under EU restrictions. Brussels’ justification stated that it was associated with Wagner PMC (EU authorities accuse the structure of violating human rights in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan and Mozambique, “including for torture and extrajudicial, mass or arbitrary executions and murders”).

According to the FT, reports showed that the sanctions had little effect on the activities of Europolis: in 2020, the company’s revenue was $134 million, and profit was $90 million; a year later, revenues were only $400,000, but the company’s balance sheet was $92 million.

“M Invest” is engaged in gold mining in Sudan, writes FT. In 2020, she came under US sanctions. In 2021, its revenue amounted to $2.6 million.

The revenue of two more companies (their names are not given), which “shipped a large amount of industrial equipment” to PMC-related enterprises in Sudan and the Central African Republic, in 2021 amounted to more than $6 million.

Mercury, which operates in the Syrian oil and gas sector, has been included in the EU sanctions list since 2021. Three years earlier, she earned $67 million, but subsequently “reported zero revenue,” writes the FT.

Prigozhin has been under US sanctions since 2016. In 2022, after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, the European Union introduced measures against him. The businessman had previously denied his involvement in the Wagner PMC for a long time and was suing the media that connected him with the activities of the group, but last fall he admitted that he created this structure in 2014. He later stated that he was also the founder of the Internet Research Agency – the so-called “troll factory”.

In December 2022, commenting on Bloomberg data that the United States admits the recognition of PMCs as a foreign terrorist organization due to participation in hostilities in Ukraine and presence in Africa, Prigozhin said that the Wagner group “does not fall under any of the criteria.” After the US Treasury classified the structure as a transnational criminal organization, the businessman said that now “finally the Wagner PMC and the Americans are colleagues.” In February, commenting on one of the FT articles on the activities of the Wagnerites in Africa, Prigozhin said that the article “much seems to be true, except for the last part, where they talk about my financial enrichment.”