Thread by @SlatsHenry

1/ DIMITRY STRESHINSKY, allegedly ERIK PRINCE’s partner in “Project Zulu”, a $216 mil proposal to sell security services to Azerbaijan, reportedly began selling arms to belligerents in the Balkans following the Soviet collapse in partnership with KGB officer ANATOLIY FEDORENKO.

2/ ABC News today published a report linking Erik Prince to "Dimitriy Streshinskiy", a dual Russian-Israeli citizen. Both men were allegedly involved in an effort several years ago to obtain a security contract with the Azerbaijan Ministry of Defense.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/speci…

3/ ABC News: “Two of Prince’s former business associates … told ABC News they have been contacted by investigators probing a pair of proposed business deals between ... Frontier Services Group, of which Prince is the founder and chairman, and Russian nationals.”

4/ “The associate said he told the agents about Prince's previously undisclosed alliance with Dimitriy Streshinskiy, a former Russian special forces soldier turned arms dealer and manufacturer.”

5/ Significantly, in testimony before the HPSCI last November, when asked by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), whether he ever had any "investments" or "business partnerships with Russian nationals,” Prince replied, “No.” (p. 83)

docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG…

6/ ABC News: “According to a 2015 interim report from an internal investigation conducted for the company (Frontier Services Group) by an outside law firm (King & Spalding) ..."

7/ “ … a man named “Dimitry,” whom two sources later told ABC News was actually Streshinskiy, acted as Prince's partner in an effort to secure a possibly
illegal private security contract with Azerbaijan.”

8/ “The internal investigation, first reported by The Intercept earlier this year, was turned over to U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors at the end of … Obama’s second term. The findings prompted two senior company officials to resign in protest over Prince’s activities …”

9/ “For the proposed contract, named "Project Zulu," Prince and Streshinskiy … each stood to make $21million, or 20 percent of the proposed $216 million deal, according to the interim report. The deal fell through over a financial dispute, another former ... associate said.”

10/ Journalist @jeremyscahill has published several articles in the @theintercept about Erik Prince, including the following piece which outlines Frontier Services Group's internal investigation into possible violations of US arms export law by Prince.

theintercept.com/2018/03/19/eri…

11/ Scahill: “As a private attorney in 2016, FBI Director Chris Wray supervised a team of lawyers that informed the Justice Department that ... Erik Prince had likely violated U.S. law while trying to sell secretly modified paramilitary attack aircraft to Azerbaijan’s military.”

12/ “The King & Spalding findings centered around a deal Prince tried to make with Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense for several American crop dusters that Prince had secretly modified into attack and surveillance aircraft."

13/ “Prince used FSG’s legitimacy to privately pitch an array of services to Azerbaijan. The King & Spalding investigation determined that nearly everything Prince offered to the Azerbaijani government was a service FSG couldn’t provide and was not for the company’s benefit."

14/ “Prince’s offer to sell the aircraft was part of a broader proposal to Azerbaijan for security and logistical services. That effort was known internally at FSG as
“Project Zulu.”

15/ According to ABC News, Erik Prince’s partner in “Project Zulu” was Dimitriy Streshinskiy, aka "Dmitry Streshinsky" and "Dmytro Streshinsky", a former Russian special forces soldier turned arms dealer and manufacturer.

16/ In 2003 testimony to the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Roman Kupchinsky, Editor and Senior Analyst, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, claimed "Dmytro Streshinsky" joined Anatoliy Fedorenko, allegedly a KGB officer, to sell arms.
csce.gov/sites/helsinki…

17/ Kupchinsky: “At the time of the war in the Balkans in the early 1990’s, the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Croatia. This embargo however, was systematically broken by many states and arms traffickers, and few faced charges afterwards.”

18/ “At that time, in February 1992, Dmytro Streshinsky, a former citizen of Ukraine, arrived in Kyiv and asked a few old friends to set up a branch of his Panamanian registered company “Global Technologies International” in the capital of Ukraine.”

19/ “They willingly agreed and soon afterwards a subsidiary company, Global Technologies Ukraine,” (GT Ukraine) was registered in Kyiv, Ukraine with Anatoliy Fedorenko, a former KGB officer according to some press reports, as president and Andriy Vazhnyk as his deputy.”

20/ “Streshinsky went right to business. First he contacted the State arms sales company, “Progress” ... and made them an offer. He explained to them that he represented a `wealthy client’ one willing to pay cash on the line for weapons, all sorts of weapons.”

21/ “He would show the company a valid end-user certificate and they would get cash. At this time, the Ukrainian military was hurting badly. The fall of the USSR had left them almost penniless and they needed to pay their troops …”

22/ “After some horse trading, they came up with a price, two prices in fact. One for the equipment Streshinsky wanted to buy. It was a rock bottom price. The other was a side payment to the military men who consented to do business with him, in other words a bribe.”

23/ “The first contract was signed for $4.5 mil. Streshinsky produced a Moroccan end user certificate and the arms were shipped to Casablanca ... some people had doubts about the final destination of these weapons, but nothing was ever mentioned and the shipment was forgotten.

24/ “The second deal was signed in October 1992. Streshinsky now had a reputation of a man who got things done. He paid on time and remained discreet. This contract was for $3.85 mil and the end user certificate named Egypt as the final destination.”

25/ Currently, Dmitry Streshinsky, Erik Prince’s would be business partner, seems to have transitioned from selling military weapons pilfered from Soviet-era stockpiles in the ‘90’s a la Viktor Bout to manufacturing small arms in Russia and Italy.

26/ Streshinsky is listed on Linkedin as the Chairman of the Board, Arsenal Firearms Group, a position he has held since September, 2010. Arsenal, which is based in Russia and Italy, and manufactures a range of small arms, including miniature firearms.

arsenalfirearms.it/our-story

27/ BOTTOM LINE: In testimony to HPSCI, ERIK PRINCE denied he had “investments” or “business partnerships” with Russian nationals. But if the sources cited by ABC News in its report from today are accurate …

28/ … and Kupchinsky’s 2003 account of Dmitry Streshinsky’s shady post-Soviet arms trafficking using the Kyiv branch of a Panamanian registered company in partnership w/an alleged KGB officer is correct, Prince might have had very good reason not to recollect.