Maersk shipped mining equipment to Russian mercenaries “Wagner” in Sudan

Maersk shipped mining equipment to Russian mercenaries in Sudan
In 2022 and 2023, Maersk transported mining equipment to a company owned by the Wagner Group in Sudan. The expert explains that the Danish shipping company has provided a central service for one of Russia’s important sources of income.
Container Ship Maersk Patras Is Pictured Docked In Port Las Palmas De Gran Canaria, Spain.
The Maersk ship Patras was carrying engines, pumps, generators and sodium cyanide used in gold mining to a Wagner-owned company in Sudan.
Photo: ATGImages / Alamy Stock Photo
Maersk has transported equipment to a mining company owned by Russian mercenaries in the Wagner group, which experts estimate is helping to finance Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Danwatch can reveal this today based on data collected by C4ADS, a non-profit organization based in Washington DC.
In December 2022 and June 2023 after the start of the war in Ukraine, Al Solag Mining in Sudan received shipments of the chemical sodium cyanide, used to extract gold, as well as engines, pumps and generators from three Chinese companies.

New report on Wagner
The materials were sailed in three rounds to the Sudanese port city of Port Sudan on board the Maersk ship MAERSK PATRAS.
Al Solag Mining is known as a shell company for another Wagner company, Meroe Gold, which was already sanctioned by the United States in 2020.
The sanctions against Meroe Gold today also apply to Al Solag Mining, but this was not the case in either December 2022 or June 2023.

At that time, however, it appeared publicly in several places that the two companies were one and the same, just as it appears from Danwatch’s documentation that Al Solag Mining’s booking of the six shipments had taken place with a Russian email address.
Maersk confirms to Danwatch that the shipments from the three Chinese companies to Al Solag Mining were sailed to Port Sudan on board the container ship MAERSK PATRAS.
“When we receive a booking, we carry out a screening of the customer to check whether it should appear on a list of sanctioned parties or be blocked for another reason. None of the companies that appear in connection with these bookings have been sanctioned at the time of booking or while the cargo was transported on board our ships”, writes Mærsk in a response to Danwatch.
Danwatch has also confronted Mærsk with the fact that Al Solag has been publicly referred to as a front company for Meroe Gold, that the consignee of the shipment had a Russian email address (MGVISA@YANDEX.RU), just as a product such as sodium cyanide is widespread in gold mining operations.

Shouldn’t Mærsk have realized that the shipments were intended for Wagner and stopped them?
“We are constantly working to be up-to-date on the latest sanctions and prevent shipments related to sanctioned interests, but in cases such as African Wagner companies, we are up against organized crime syndicates who work systematically to avoid detection,” it reads, among other things in a reply from Maersk.

Cushion against Western sanctions
The Wagner group was founded in 2014 by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s close ally, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and has since carried out military operations for Moscow in Syria, Ukraine, Mali and the Central African Republic, among others. In this connection, the group has been repeatedly accused of killing, raping and torturing civilians.
In Africa, the Wagner Group’s military work is accompanied by both mining and forestry. Especially in the Central African Republic and Sudan, where the Russians have secured access to valuable natural resources in exchange for security assistance to those in power.

Karen Philippa Larsen is a researcher in the Wagner group at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). She explains that the private army’s gold and diamond mining plays an important role in both the Russian economy and the Wagner soldiers’ military activities elsewhere in Africa.
“The Wagner Group’s operations in Africa – and their natural resource extractions have provided some income to Russia. It’s hard to say how much, and there are many different numbers at play. But some believe that the Wagner group’s gold mining in Sudan has provided Russia with a reserve that has acted as a buffer for Russia against Western sanctions and has helped to keep Russia’s economy fairly afloat in the early years of the war in Ukraine. , she says to Danwatch.
None of this could succeed if Wagner’s mining companies did not have access to the necessary infrastructure, including container shipping, she emphasizes.
That is why it is surprising that Mærsk has shipped goods to Al Solag Mining, she believes.
“The whole premise for the Wagner group to be on the African continent and for them to be of value to Russia rests on the fact that they can buy equipment and material and sell gold or diamonds. This of course requires that they have access to the right infrastructure. It could, for example, be transport in and out of Africa and an opportunity to sell the raw materials on the international market”, says Karen Philippa Larsen to Danwatch

Maersk stopped new Wagner shipment
The shipments to Al Solag Mining are not the only time that containers for the Wagner Group’s mining operations in Africa have found their way onto a Maersk ship.
In January 2024, six shipments of sodium cyanide were due from China to the port of Douala, Cameroon, and on into the Central African Republic, where the Wagner-owned mining company Mining Industries SARLU stood by as the recipient.

The containers were loaded on board the ship MOSCOW MAERSK in January 2024, but the following month, while the ship was on its way to Cameroon, Maersk learned that they were sailing with goods for a Wagner company.

“The containers were shipped in a European port, where they are still located,” Maersk told Danwatch.
The shipping company did not want to elaborate on whether it was they themselves who were suspected of sailing with materials for the Wagner group, or whether they were warned from another side.
According to the service Visiwise, which makes it possible to track containers, the containers were shipped in the southern Spanish port of Algeciras. Mining Industries SARLU was sanctioned by the United States in May 2024 for “importing chemicals intended for mining, including sodium cyanide, presumably to control the illegal mining activities of the Wagner group”.

https://danwatch.dk/maersk-sejlede-mineudstyr-til-russiske-lejesoldater-i-sudan/