Following the Syrian Money and circling back to torture

Today is an important day as Evgeny Prigozhin released a statement on his official company’s Telegram account Concord Management he is the founder of Wagner mercenaries group. While this has been well-known for years, this official statement will certainly play a major role in upcoming litigation and sanction cases.

One difficult litigation case has been the one of Hamdi Bouta and the responsibility of Wagner mercenaries into his torture and murder at the Al-Shaer Gas Plant, Homs, Syria 2017. A brilliant investigation done by Candace Rondeaux for New America and summarizing the work of journalists at Novaya Gazeta established the responsibility of some Wagner mercenaries in a documented sanction case.

In March 2021, a family member of Hamdi Bouta filed a criminal complaint in Moscow which was facilitated by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and Memorial Human Rights Center, demanding the initiation of criminal proceedings against alleged members of the so-called Private Military Company (PMC) Wagner. This demand has obviously little chance to succeed.

We looked using open sources only the activities of the Evgeny Prigozhin galaxy in Syria since its start and came up with the following chart linking Prigozhin to oil and security businesses in Syria.

While the Syrian business deserves a very long write up, this post puts in the open the organization based on data we found and links them directly to Evgeny Prigozhin.

It is to be noted that Sanad Guard and Security Services, Al Maham Security and Al Sayad which are local Syrian companies have been trained by Russian forces/ Wagner group and were used as security for oil facilities or anti-ISIS operations.