JPMorgan Chase and HSBC reportedly facilitated payments for African companies controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner PMC. Despite international sanctions against Prigozhin and Wagner, shell companies under his control purchased equipment from China for resource extraction, using major Western banks to process the transactions.
According to leaked documents analyzed by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) and reported by The Moscow Times, Wagner used Sudanese company Meroe Gold in August 2017 to purchase mining equipment from China’s Henan Liming. The payment, amounting to $688,460, was funneled through Sudan’s Blue Nile Mashreg Bank, JPMorgan Chase in New York, and China CITIC Bank in Hong Kong.
Another payment followed in September 2017, when Meroe Gold paid $79,920 to China’s AGG Power Technology for generators and spare parts. This transaction also passed through JPMorgan Chase and reached Hang Seng Bank, part of HSBC.
JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the US, and HSBC, one of the biggest in the UK, facilitated these payments despite Prigozhin being sanctioned in 2016 and Wagner in 2017. However, Meroe Gold itself wasn’t sanctioned until 2020, when the US added it to the blacklist alongside another Prigozhin-controlled company, M Invest.
These financial operations, as noted by C4ADS, allowed Wagner to establish a foothold in Africa through a network of intermediaries and banks that inadvertently enabled its early operations on the continent. The payments funded Wagner’s security and mining activities in Sudan and the Central African Republic, blurring the lines between legitimate and illicit business.
Despite these findings, JPMorgan Chase stated it found no records of such transactions, while HSBC declined to comment but emphasized its strong efforts against financial crimes.
Prigozhin, who built Wagner’s business empire in Africa by offering military services to governments and securing lucrative mining ventures, allegedly died in a plane crash in Russia on August 23, 2023. His death remains under investigation, with Russia refusing international scrutiny.
