Blackwater Aircraft - In the wake of those killings, Blackwater lost a $1 billion contract to guard the U.S. diplomats and officials in Iraq. But the company rebranded and continued to thrive. The Obama Administration granted major contracts to Prince's firm to provide security in conflict zones.
Prince's interests expanded well beyond the military sector. He traded oil and minerals in Africa. He assembled a private army for his friend, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. He prepared a force in Somalia to combat pirates in the Gulf of Aden.
Blackwater Aircraft
He helped train a hit squad for the CIA. When Trump took office, Prince called on the new Administration to privatize the war effort in Afghanistan, publicly pitching a plan that would let contractors handle many of the U.S.
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military's functions. Prince does not appear to be a focus of that investigation. But Artemenko tells TIME that federal investigators have questioned him about his relationship with Prince. In interviews with TIME in April and May, both Derkach and Artemenko denied wrongdoing and described the investigation as part of a political witch hunt against Trump's allies.
Prince did not respond to numerous requests for comment, including a detailed list of questions about the documents outlining his proposals for Ukraine. Over the years, one of Prince's most reliable lines of business has been wartime logistics: moving people and supplies into areas of conflict.
Starting in 2006, the aviation arm of Blackwater air-dropped food and weapons for U.S. troops on the front lines in Afghanistan. "If you need to transport stuff in and out of a war zone, you're not going to call UPS," says a person familiar with Prince's business operations.
"His company does that." The crash of the small surveillance helicopter, believed to be a version of the Hughes Defender that was developed during the Vietnam War, was the second associated with the U.S. war effort in Iraq in four days.
HII [HII] and Ocean Aero announced the start of a strategic agreement that seeks to advance capabilities of both companies' unmanned maritime platforms and autonomous software solutions, respectively. The companies said they have begun unspecified multiple, simultaneous efforts "to enhance the ...
As the deals ran into resistance from the government in Ukraine, Prince's allies faced bigger problems in New York City, where both Artemenko and Derkach are now under criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment on the investigation, which is reportedly focused on whether the two men were involved in a suspected Russian plot to sway the 2020 presidential election.
Three of the projects described in the documents also include a "participation offer," or a cut of the annual profits. The participation offers listed in the document would be worth a total of around $35 million per year if the plan were to be executed.
(The documents do not make clear who would get this money or why.) Novikov, who negotiated with Prince and studied the plan closely while serving as a presidential adviser, says he understood this as a proposal for kickbacks to government officials.
"It looked like a bribe," he says. As an alternative, Prince's team offered to line up an American lobbyist for Ukraine named Joseph Schmitz. A former Blackwater executive, Schmitz had been a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016 and had contacts in the Administration.
He was ready to represent Ukraine for a fee of $500,000 plus expenses, according to a proposed lobbying agreement obtained by TIME. (Schmitz did not respond to emails seeking comment.) Ukrainian officials received that agreement early last year from Artemenko's lobbying firm but did not sign it.
Derkach says he was intrigued by Prince's vision for these industries. One major advantage Prince brought to the table was his list of contacts in the developing world. He had worked for many years in the Middle East and Africa, dealing with warlords and autocrats who could become new clients for Ukrainian weapons and aircraft.
The main flaw in the plan, Derkach says, was the cooperation it required from Ukraine's local factory bosses and oligarchs, who control much of the military-industrial complex. In the weeks after Prince's visit, his associates prepared two versions of a detailed business plan and sent them to officials in Zelensky's office.
The first, dated June 23, 2020, stated that the acquisition of Motor Sich would require $50 million to purchase a minority stake, and another $950 million to buy 76% of the factory. The money was meant to come from Windward Capital, an investment vehicle that Prince has reportedly used in the past.
A U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter went down Saturday northeast of Baghdad, killing all 12 service members on board. The American military in Baghdad has refused to confirm a report by a Pentagon official that debris at the crash site indicated the helicopter was shot out of the air by a surface-to-air missile.
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LinkedIn, youtube, Aviation Ad Network, RSS, and FeedBurner. Then Tell a Friend. Get involved, and experience the Avjobs difference today! Another business plan for Ukraine's military industry, dated June 29, 2020, provided new details and incentives for the government to participate.
It described a planned takeover of Antonov, the state-owned airplane manufacturer, by replacing its CEO with an executive from Artemenko's company. The proposal also called for an "ultimatum" to be issued to the Chinese investors in Motor Sich, who would be forced to either accept an "immediate sale" or face the "loss of value," the plan stated.
"If Chinese remain uncooperative," the Ukrainian government should take over the factory and transfer control to new investors, the document says. Helvenston was killed, along with Jerko "Jerry" Zovko, Wesley J.K. Batalona, and Michael R. Teague, when a frenzied mob of insurgents ambushed a supply convoy they were escorting through Fallujah.
The insurgents burned and mutilated the guards and strung two of the bodies from a bridge. The gruesome scene was filmed and broadcast worldwide, leading the U.S. military to launch a three-week siege of Fallujah. Things appeared to move quickly from there.
The President's office put Prince in touch with a law firm in Kyiv that frequently works for the Ukrainian government. The firm prepared a legal framework for completing the deal Prince wanted. The work was complex, especially when it came to acquiring Motor Sich, says the person familiar with Prince's thinking.
So what is EP Aviation LLC? The company, located in McLean, VA is described as providing "nonscheduled air transportation." The company's phone number is the same number in McLean (and physical address) as that of the Prince Group, whose holdings include Blackwater, among a number of other related companies.
Hours before President George W. Bush's annual State of the Union address, the U.S. military announced three more troop deaths, a Marine killed Sunday and two soldiers killed on Monday. That raised the three-day toll from Saturday to the 31st.
As the party got seated inside a private karaoke room on the second floor, Igor Novikov, who was then a top adviser to Ukraine's President, remembers feeling a little nervous. He had done some reading about Blackwater, the private military company Prince had founded in 1997, and he knew about the massacre its troops had perpetrated during the U.S.
war in Iraq. Coming face to face that night with the world's most prominent soldier of fortune, Novikov remembers thinking: "What does this guy want from us?" Quoting unnamed American officials, the newspaper said the helicopter's four-man crew was killed along with a gunner on a second Blackwater helicopter.
It said one military official said that at least four of the victims had suffered gunshot wounds to the head, raising the prospect that some of them had been shot on the ground. Prince was unwilling to make that connection, says a person familiar with his thinking on the matter.
"Erik made it very clear that he didn't have the keys to Trump's White House, and that he didn't want to play that game." © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights.
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[GD] in San Diego. Due to their flexible capability, the ESBs are meant ... Their relationship began not long after Prince emerged from the Blackwater scandal of 2007. That fall, a group of Prince's soldiers-for-hire shot up a crowded square in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians and wounding 20 others.
Several of the gunmen were sentenced to decades in the U.S. prisons for their roles in the massacre. (Trump pardoned four of them in his final weeks in office.) Prince's testimony in Congress about the incident drove a national debate about the privatization of war, turning him, at the age of 38, into the defiant face of the modern-day mercenary
. This account of Prince's ambitions in Ukraine is based on interviews with seven sources, including current and former U.S. and Ukrainian officials as well as people who worked directly with Prince to try to realize his aspirations in Ukraine.
Those business plans, which have not been previously reported, were confirmed by four of the sources on both sides of the negotiations, all of whom recalled meeting in person with the Prince last year to discuss them.
The documents describe a series of ventures that would give Prince a pivotal role in Ukraine's military industry and its ongoing conflict with Russia, which has taken more than 14,000 lives since it began seven years ago.
Relatively few U.S. aircraft have been shot down during the war despite hundreds, perhaps thousands of flights over Iraq. Helicopters typically flow fast and low over populated areas, making it extremely difficult for militant fighters to draw a bead with shoulder-fired missiles.
U.S. fighter jets normally fly at very high altitudes and usually can be heard screaming through the skies but remain invisible to the naked eye. That leaves the status of Prince's plans for Ukraine unclear. Yermak, the presidential chief of staff, says the government intends to nationalize Motor Sich and keep it under state control.
Private investors, including Prince and his partners, would be welcome to bid on a stake in the factory through a competitive tender, Yermak told TIME in an interview in April. "We are interested in working with all our partners," he says.
"We are interested in there being fairness." In September, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Derkach, accusing him of being an "active Russian agent" involved in a plot to help Trump win a second term. About a month later, four FBI agents showed up at Artemenko's home in the Washington area, Artemenko recalls.
They wanted to know about his work in Ukraine, and his relationships with Prince, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others. "They asked me about my relationship with Erik, how we met, where we met," Artemenko says.
"Normal questions." By the time Prince set his sights on the Ukrainian military industry, the nation's conflict with Russia had settled into a kind of stalemate, with sporadic shelling and sniper fire along the front lines.
Peace talks had stalled, and Ukraine's government was increasingly desperate for a way out of the impasse. An Embraer Super Tucano was placed on the U.S. civil aircraft registry on February 21, 2008 under the name of EP Aviation LLC.
Additionally, 28 other aircraft have been registered to this company, mostly over the past few months. The list includes 14 Bell 412 helicopters, as well as a number of fixed wing aircraft. Witnesses in the Fadhil neighborhood told The Associated Press that they saw the helicopter go down after gunmen on the ground opened fire, possibly striking the pilot or co-pilot or both.
Accounts varied, but all were consistent that at least one person operating the aircraft had been shot and badly hurt before the crash. A senior Iraqi military official said Tuesday the aircraft was shot down, but this was disputed by a U.S.
military official in Washington. The Iraqi said the helicopter was hit by a machine gunner over the Fadhil neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River, while the American official said there was no indication in initial reports that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot down.
Civilian aircraft that serve Baghdad International Airport use avoidance techniques that include landing in a steep, circular descent from nearly straight overhead the runways. Takeoffs are achieved with the same technique until passenger jets are out of missile range.
After working as a cargo broker in the 2000s, Artemenko had founded his own transport company in 2010, AirTrans LLC, which frequently flew cargo for Prince's operation, he tells TIME. In 2015, Artemenko says, AirTrans officially became a part of Prince's company, Frontier Resource Group.
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