How Wagner mercenaries abused HSBC and JP Morgan

Whatever happened to the Wagner Group, Evgeny Prigozhin’s shadowy army of prisoners and mercenaries? In the wake of Wagner’s abortive mutiny in June 2023 – and of Prigozhin’s own not-so-mysterious death two months later in a plane crash near Moscow – most of the Russia-based units of the group were rolled into the Kremlin’s official armed forces. In Africa, however, where Wagner built an empire not only of guns-for-hire but also of murky mining and oil concessions, Prigozhin’s former henchmen continue their bloody and lucrative business. And according to a new report by the US-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) part of that business relied on the unwitting assistance of international banks such as JP Morgan Chase and HSBC Group’s Hang Seng Bank, as well as international shipping companies such as Maersk, the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), and Compagnie Maritime d’Affrètement et de la Compagnie Générale Maritime (CMA CGM). 

The transactions and shipments detailed in the C4ADS report date to 2017 when Prigozhin had already been personally sanctioned by the US for a year, but his companies – including Wagner’s Sudanese mining firm, Meroe Gold – still operated legally.