US Treasury lifts sanctions on ex-IDF general

The United States Department of the Treasury has lifted sanctions on IDF maj.-gen. (ret.) Israel Ziv and his company Global CST after more than a year. The security consultancy allegedly sold arms worth millions of dollars to South Sudan during its civil war.

The Treasury Department did not say why Ziv and Global CST were removed from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN).

It had sanctioned Ziv and two others in December 2018 over their roles in South Sudan’s civil war, saying that Ziv, a former OC Operations Directorate, used legal entities as cover for selling weapons that prolonged the conflict in South Sudan.

Following his removal from the SDN list, Ziv told The Jerusalem Post he was glad to have been delisted by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), adding that he will continue his Green Horizon project, which provides food security for South Sudan.

“This was a crucial and challenging year,” Ziv said. “But I believed all along that the US authorities would ultimately reach the right conclusion and that American justice will prevail, which OFAC did with its delisting determination, concluding that the sanctions are no longer warranted.”

“Above all, I’m pleased that now I’ll be able to restore and rehabilitate the... agriculture project we have established in South Sudan,” he said. “As I constantly stated along the process, neither I nor my companies have been engaged in the sale of any arms, ammunition and/or related products in or related to South Sudan, nor with any illicit activity.”

When he was sanctioned, the US government said Ziv used his agricultural company, which “was nominally present” in the country, as cover for the sale of approximately $150 million worth of weapons to the government, including rifles, grenade launchers and shoulder-fired rockets.

According to a statement at the time, Ziv had been “paid through the country’s oil industry, as he had close collaboration with a major multinational oil firm.” He also “maintained the loyalty of senior Government of South Sudan officials through bribery and promises of security support. He has also reportedly planned to organize attacks by mercenaries on South Sudanese oil fields and infrastructure in an effort to create a problem that only his company and affiliates could solve.”

The Treasury Department also designated three of Ziv’s Israeli companies – Global NTM Ltd., Global Law Enforcement and Security Ltd. and Global IZ Group Ltd. – as being involved.

Ziv vehemently denied the American allegations at the time, telling the Post he and Global CST had nothing to hide and invited authorities to visit his company’s projects.

When the sanctions were announced, he said, “it was like an atomic bomb falling on me, or like a hit and run by a large truck when the sanctions came. There’s not one single night I don’t go to sleep wondering where these allegations came from, and [I] wake up every day asking it.”

“If even 1% of what they say is correct, I should be imprisoned in Israel... My company never ever supplied any weapons to any South Sudanese,” Ziv said.