Journalists of the American TV channel CNN have published an investigation into the fact that Russia secretly exports gold from the African state of Sudan, disguising it as the export of other goods, including cookies. We are talking about 16 planes with gold in the last year and a half.
According to CNN sources, the scheme involves the military leadership of Sudan, which allows the export of gold to circumvent the laws, depriving the country of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
The military leadership makes concessions in exchange for support for the Kremlin, as was the case de facto in 2021, when the Russian Federation supported the coup in Sudan, asserting the power of the military.
The former US official suggests that from the beginning, Russia was guided by plans for unhindered access to natural resources. An important role in this is played by Yevgeny Prigozhin and the "Wagner PMC" associated with him, which was previously reported in Africa and Sudan.
According to CNN, Meroe Gold, a gold miner and security services company, is owned by M-invest, a company linked to Prigozhin in Sudan. According to the "Dossier" center, the curator of operations for the export of Sudanese gold is Oleksandr Kuznetsov, who is called one of the high-ranking officials of Wagnerʼs PMC.
Russian expansion in Sudan began shortly after the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea. The supply of gold is considered an effective means of circumventing Western sanctions.
- "PMC Wagner" is an unofficial military organization that is not part of the regular armed forces of Russia and has no legal status on its territory. At different times and according to different data, the military units of the PMC numbered from 1,350 to 2,500 people. Officials in Russia deny the existence of the PMC. The UN published a report, according to which more than a thousand mercenaries of the Russian PMC Wagner are fighting in Libya. The president of Turkey also stated this earlier. UN experts have found out that most of the mercenaries of PMC Wagner are citizens of Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine.
- Since 2019, Sudan has been recording Russian mercenaries from the "Wagner PMC", who had previously fought in Donbas and Syria. Russia is actively developing ties with African countries and is trying to strengthen its military presence there.
- On April 21, the EU introduced sanctions against the curator of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin. They note that his actions "undermined and threatened the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine."