Militia leader grew rich by selling gold

Late last year, as President Omar Hassan AlBashir’s hold on power weakened, one of Sudan’s most feared militia leaders lashed out against the government of his long-time ally and benefactor. In a speech to cheering troops, militia chief Mohamed “Hemedti” Hamdan Dagalo sympathized with the thousands of protesters who had poured onto the streets in December demanding food, fuel and an end to corruption. He hit out at officials “who take what isn’t theirs”. “There are some people who are doing great harm, and they are the officials, not the poor,” he raged.

After years of loyally supporting Bashir, Hemedti took part in the military coup that toppled the leader in April and is now a senior figure in the transitional government that is preparing the ground for elections in three years’ time. Under the constitution, members of the transitional government aren’t allowed to engage in private business activity. Now a Reuters investigation has found that even as Hemedti was accusing Bashir’s people of enriching themselves at the public’s expense, a company that Hemedti’s family owns was flying gold bars worth millions of dollars to Dubai.

Current and former government officials and gold industry sources said that in 2018 as Sudan’s economy was imploding, Bashir gave Hemedti free rein to sell Sudan’s most valuable natural resource through this family firm, Algunade. At times Algunade bypassed central bank controls over gold exports, at others it sold to the central bank for a preferential rate, half a dozen sources said. A central bank spokesman said he had no information about the matter.

Airway bills and invoices, reviewed by Reuters, give a rare glimpse into Algunade’s dealings - a closelyguarded secret in a country where two thirds of the population live in poverty. The documents, covering a four-week period from the end of last year, show Algunade sent around $30 million of gold bars to Dubai, around a ton in weight. In the past, Hemedti has spoken openly about owning gold interests, most recently in an interview with the BBC in August. “I’m not the first man to have gold mines. It’s true, we have gold mines, and there’s nothing preventing us from working in gold,” he said then.

But in response to Reuters’ questions for this article, Hemedti’s office denied any link between the commander and Algunade. In a separate interview, Algunade’s general manager, Abdelrahman Al-Bakri, said the firm is owned by Hemedti’s brother Abdelrahim, who is also the deputy head of Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Nevertheless, Bakri maintained there was no connection between Algunade and Hemedti and his RSF, which has evolved from a militia in Darfur to Sudan’s most powerful paramilitary group.

“Algunade is as far as can be from the RSF,” he told Reuters at the firm’s heavily secured headquarters. He showed Reuters registration documents that named Abdelrahim as the company’s owner. Reuters was unable to contact Abdelrahim. Bakri acknowledged that Algunade exported gold to Dubai in late 2018 but said it had done so at the request of Bashir’s intelligence agency. He denied the firm sold gold to the central bank at a preferential rate.

Hemedti’s grip on Sudan’s vital gold trade illustrates the scale of the challenge to rescue an economy broken by decades of mismanagement, corruption and war. His career began as a militia man in western Darfur, where rebels took up arms against Khartoum in 2003. Bashir mobilized several militia to quell the revolt and, in the conflict that followed, some 300,000 people were killed and two million more driven from their homes. The government disowned “outlaw” fighters who murdered civilians, but the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir for war crimes and the United States imposed further economic sanctions against his government.

In Darfur, Hemedti earned a reputation as a ruthless commander and a loyal servant to Bashir. The president called him “Hemayti”, meaning “my protector”. After Hemedti seized the goldmines of Darfur’s Jebel Amer mountain region, Bashir allowed him to hold onto the prize. “He became the new king of Jebel Amer and its gold,” said Amjad Farid, a politician and prodemocracy activist. “For Bashir, he was his loyal boy, his protection force.”

Hemedti and his militia took full control of the Jebel Amer mines in 2017 - the year the United States began lifting economic sanctions against Sudan. He faced few obstacles as he expanded his operations from Darfur to South Kordofan and other regions of the country. Algunade traded with poor, artisan miners who used toxic mercury to extract gold, at grave risk to their health. The leftover soil, known locally as “Karta”, was trucked to Algunade’s plants where it was treated with cyanide to harvest the remaining ore.

These practices have sometimes brought Algunade into conflict with local people. In October, people in the town of Talodi, South Kordofan, set fire to the Algunade plant, accusing the firm of plundering their gold and polluting their soil.