2023-06-29 03:40:00
He Russian magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, he was forced into exile and his mercenary company is disbanding. But apparently the former ally of Vladimir Putin has plenty of cash to fall back on to live comfortably in Belarus.
It is estimated that the ruthless Prigozhin, who led an armed rebellion against Putin over the weekendis a billionaire who enjoys, thanks to his business with the Russian elite, a palace, a huge yacht and a private plane, among other luxuries.
The group’s leader had been missing since the end of his rebellion on Saturday night against the commanders of the Russian regular army, whom he accused of having bombed his positions. He is now believed to be staying at a $60-a-night three-star budget hotel in Minsk, the Belarusian capital..
His militants seized military bases and began a march on Moscow from southwestern Russia, near the border with Ukraine, where they have engaged in ruthless fighting in recent months. But suddenly, only 400 km from the capital, they stopped their advance and withdrew to their bases. At Putin’s invitation, The combatants of this fearsome group of mercenaries will now be able to choose whether to join the armymove to Belarus or “return to their homes”.
Biden: “We Westerners had nothing to do with the Wagner group rebellion”
What does the Wagner Group do?
Putin acknowledged that his country paid 1 billion dollars to the paramilitary group in the last year: “Between May 2022 and May 2023, the State transferred 86,262 million rubles (around 1,000 million dollars) in payments to the Wagner group“, he said during a meeting with military officials broadcast on Russian television. He added that the Kremlin had “fully financed” Wagner and stressed that the Concord company, Prigozhin’s group, had earned about 937 million dollars at the same time.
the paramilitary group Wagner has been considered, for years, the armed wing of Moscow abroad, especially in Syria and several African countries.. Internationally, the private militia is known for exploiting local wealth, protecting governments, waging information warfare, and carrying out brutal military operations that include torture, rape, and mass murder.
Putin offered the Wagner Group to join the Russian army and accused the West of seeking “bloodshed”
In Syria, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), Wagner’s mercenaries – Russians, citizens of other former Soviet republics and Syrians – act as “special forces” on the ground alongside the Kremlin army since 2015. Currently they continue to protect oil wells and in the provinces of Hama and Latakia.
In Africa, they are present in particular in Libya, Sudan and Mozambique. Also, on the front line in Mali, despite the fact that the local authorities speak of “Russian instructors”, or in the Central African Republic, where a person in charge of the group leads the security of President Faustin-Archange Touadera.
The British government said that the finances of the Wagner Group are “opaque and obscure”, but that Prigozhin is known to make a lot of money from dubious government contracts and natural resources. In a raid on the Wagner Group headquarters in St. Petersburg he revealed US$49 million in cash in dollars and other foreign currencies, along with a cache of gold bullion and fake Prigozhin passports.
Furthermore, it is well known that the Wagner Group loots diamonds, oil, gold, minerals and gas from the countries in which it operates to bring them to Russiawhich multiplied Prigozhin’s wealth to extraordinary levels, with some estimates placing his personal fortune at more than 2,500 million dollars.
The Wagner Group leader said they were not trying to overthrow Putin: it was just a “master class”
Prigozhin, who is also on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, appears to be nothing less than a Russian mobster kingpin, and he is accused of having his fingers in companies and corruption schemes throughout Russia. Everything from restoration and construction to oil and gas, and even “troll farms” spreading propaganda in the West, are believed to be in Prigozhin’s portfolio.
According to different international reports, they have a palatial property worth US$ 9.5 million, a 37 meter yacht called “St Vitamin” valued at $7 million and a $3.8 million Hawker 800 private jet.
Prigozhin was named the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (CCRP) “Person of the Year” in 2022. A journalist for the group, Dew Sullivan, said of him: “Prigozhin is a soldier of corruption. He fights and kills to install corruption. Wagner is nothing more than an organized crime group sanctioned by the Russian government”.
But now his empire is crumbling and he is in doubt whether the Kremlin will allow him to continue using his assets or seize them.
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