An exclusive investigation by UK’s The Guardian has found companies hiring hundreds of Colombian fighters for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces.
A one-bedroom flat off north London’s Creighton Road in Tottenham is, according to UK government records, tied to a transnational network of companies involved in the mass recruitment of mercenaries to fight in Sudan alongside the RSF, said the report.
Colombian mercenaries were directly involved in the RSF’s seizure of the southwestern Sudanese city of El Fasher in late October, which prompted a killing frenzy that analysts say has cost at least 60,000 lives.
“The flat in Tottenham is registered to a company called Zeuz Global, set up by two individuals named and sanctioned last week by the US treasury for hiring Colombian mercenaries to fight for the RSF,” said The Guardian.
“Both figures – Colombian nationals in their 50s – are described in documents at Companies House, the government register of firms operating in the UK, as living in Britain,” it said.
“The day after the US treasury announced sanctions on those behind the Colombian mercenary operation –December 9 – Zeuz Global abruptly moved its operation to the very heart of London. On 10 December the firm shared “new address details” Its new postcode matches One Aldwych, a five-star hotel in Covent Garden,” the report added.
Yet the first line of Zeuz Global’s new address is, confusingly, “4dd Aldwych,” which corresponds to the Waldorf Hilton hotel 100 meters away, according to The Guardian.
Both hotels said they had no link to Zeuz Global and had no idea why the firm had used their postcodes.
“It is of major concern that the key individuals the US government claims are directing this mercenary supply have been able to set up a UK company operating from a flat in north London, and even to claim that they’re resident in the UK,” said Mike Lewis, a researcher and former member of the UN panel of experts on Sudan.
When Companies House was asked if it had any knowledge of what Zeuz Global actually did, or is doing, it did not respond. The government agency would also not confirm whether the sanctioned individuals were, in fact, resident in the UK.
Contacting Zeuz proved fruitless; its website, set up in May, was labelled as “under construction” with no contact details provided.
