The Sentry is an investigative and policy organization that seeks to disable multinational predatory networks that benefit from violent conflict, repression, and kleptocracy.

 

“Not On Our Watch” Newsletter – June 2019

 

MAKING WAR CRIMINALS PAY

The area stretching from northeast to central Africa is the deadliest war zone globally since World War II. Over the past three decades alone, tens of millions have died and millions have faced starvation as a result of conflict, repression, and corruption. In a region marked by spectacular natural resource wealth in the form of oil, gold, diamonds, other minerals, elephants, and other wildlife, monstrous human rights crimes occur regularly: genocide, human trafficking, rape as a weapon of war, village burning, child soldier recruitment.  Unchecked greed is the main driver behind these atrocities. This violent kleptocratic system is enabled by networks of brokers, traffickers, mining companies, banks, arms dealers, and shell companies. The way to change this system is to shut down those who profit from human suffering.

Every year, leaders from corrupt regimes, armed groups, and their international collaborators loot billions of dollars from this region of Africa. The ill-gotten gains enter the international financial system, primarily in U.S. dollars, but also in Euros and Pounds Sterling, and thus become vulnerable to law enforcement action, freezes, and even seizure. But first, those money trails need to be tracked — the mazes of shell companies, offshore bank accounts, and luxury homes must be exposed and documented to provide the evidence for banks and governments to act.

That’s where The Sentry comes in.

The Sentry is our investigative and policy team that follows the dirty money connected to African war criminals and transnational war profiteers. By disrupting the cost-benefit calculations of those who hijack governments and profit from violence in East and Central Africa, the deadliest war zone globally since World War II, we seek to counter the main drivers of conflict and create new leverage for peace, human rights, and good governance. Co-founded by George Clooney and John Prendergast, The Sentry is composed of financial forensic investigators, international human rights lawyers, and regional experts, as well as former law enforcement agents, intelligence officers, policymakers, investigative journalists, and banking professionals.

Within East and Central Africa, The Sentry focuses primarily on the conflict zone spanning Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. We aim to create significant financial consequences for kleptocrats, war criminals, and their international financial facilitators through network sanctions, anti-money laundering measures, prosecutions, compliance actions by banks and other private companies, asset recovery, and other tools of economic and legal pressure. The Sentry and our partner the Enough Project engage intensively with policymakers, law enforcement officials, global banks, tech and mining companies, and other private sector entities around the world. We also support activist campaigns involving students, faith-based groups, celebrities, human rights organizations, and other concerned constituencies.

Since our launch in 2016, The Sentry has converted extensive investigative research into evidence-rich reports and dozens of dossiers on individuals and entities connected to grand corruption, violence, or serious human rights abuses. As a result, assets have been frozen, travel has been banned, money-laundering routes have been exposed and shut down, and individuals have been cut off from the international financial system. Much more needs to be done to alter the incentive structure from war to peace, but we are finally seeing consequences imposed on those orchestrating and benefiting from genocide, mass rape, ethnic cleansing, child soldier recruitment, and other crimes against humanity.

Here are some examples of the impact of The Sentry’s work:

THE IMPACT ON POLICY

Since its launch in 2016, The Sentry has produced dozens of dossiers on hundreds of targets for governments and banks around the world, and has deepened investigations of African war criminals and their international accomplices.

  • For the first time, the issue of corruption-fueled conflict was brought to the U.N. Security Council, featuring The Sentry’s Founding Director John Prendergast as the sole presenter alongside the U.N. Secretary General.
  • In 2018, our investigative work helped catalyze a groundbreaking Advisory to financial institutions from the U.S. Treasury Department that warned banks throughout the world about the connection between human rights abuses and corruption, as well as the first use of visa denials to ban corrupt Congolese officials from coming to the United States.
  • The Sentry’s investigative dossiers have led to network-focused sanctions by the United States on multiple war criminals and foreign facilitators, including dozens of their companies, and supported the imposition of sanctions by the U.N. Security Council, European Union, Australia, and Canada.
  • We have briefed and provided dossiers to banks from New York to London to Paris to Nairobi. As a result, international banks and their affiliates and partners in the region are beginning to shut down the flow of corrupt funds through their systems, by closing out specific accounts, terminating relationships with corrupt banks in the region, and other actions.
  • The Sentry team led in the effort to pass the Global Magnitsky Act – a groundbreaking anti-corruption and human rights law.

IMPACT IN AFRICA

Investigations, financial pressure and law enforcement action take time, and to impact the powerful profiteer networks and directly affect the lives of millions of people living in war zones takes time as well. Nevertheless, the strategy is already making a difference in Africa. For example:

  • The first Global Magnitsky action included a massive blow against the network of businessman Dan Gertler, one of then-President Joseph Kabila’s long-time business partners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a focus of The Sentry’s investigative work. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Gertler, his main business partner, and 33 of his companies.  Going after the international commercial facilitators of extreme corruption and mass violence is one of the key aspects of The Sentry’s mission. Tightening the noose around the president’s finances and corrupt business networks contributed to rising pressures inside and outside Congo that led Kabila to break with the pattern of nearly all of the leaders of neighboring countries and step down in favor elections, rather than change the constitution to enable him to maintain power indefinitely.
  • In a series of hard-hitting investigative exposes, The Sentry revealed to the world how South Sudan’s civil war was sparked and fueled by the greed of its leaders. Leading investigations by The Sentry zeroed in on three South Sudanese military commanders, Generals Paul Malong, Malek Ruben Riak, and Gregory Vasili, exposing their corrupt conduct and role in looting and mass atrocities. Shortly thereafter, the generals and their companies were hit with U.S. sanctions targeting their personal and corporate assets. A Sentry investigation exposed the Chief of Staff of the South Sudan’s armed forces who had been living a life of luxury overseas while his country was wracked by civil war. Shortly after, Australian Federal Police seized a $1.5 million mansion belonging to the general that had been prominently featured in a Sentry report. The Sentry exposed two businessmen close to South Sudan’s President, one for trafficking weapons, the other for looting state coffers. The U.S. then used authorities under the Global Magnitsky Act to cut them off from the U.S. financial system, undermining their ability to carry out further financial crimes. These and other combined sanctions and pressures hitting the wallets of South Sudan’s leaders have helped steer them into a peace agreement after years of a brutal civil war.