Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s security firm setting up shop in Myanmar: report

Erik Prince, former Navy Seal and founder of private military contractor Blackwater USA, arrives to testify during a closed-door House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, November 30, 2017. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP
Erik Prince, former Navy Seal and founder of private military contractor Blackwater USA, arrives to testify during a closed-door House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, November 30, 2017. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP

Erik Prince, founder of scandal-plagued private military contractor Blackwater, is making a move into the Myanmar security market.

The Myanmar Times has reported that Prince’s Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong-based logistics and security company, will be providing security solutions for foreign investors working in the country.

“As a Hong Kong-listed company, FSG has established a joint-venture security company in Myanmar and obtained a security licence to provide international-standard security services to international investors in Myanmar, including those from China, Japan and Thailand,” a FSG spokesperson told The Myanmar Times.

FSG (Myanmar) Security Services has 30 security personnel listed in Myanmar so far, and is registered as a foreign services company, according to the paper.  

Frontier Services Group has recently been the subject of widespread condemnation after it emerged that they had signed a deal with the Chinese government to build a training base in China’s western Xinjiang province, where almost a million ethnic Uighur Muslims have been languishing in “reeducation camps” aimed at “de-radicalization.”

The outfit that made Prince’s name, Blackwater (now rebranded as Academi), was a private security firm that received multi-million dollar contracts working for the US military, particularly during the invasion of Afghanistan. Since then, the company has been dogged by accusations of disproportionate use of force, negligence, discrimination, wrongful death, and smuggling.

In the most horrifying case, Blackwater guards were convicted of manslaughter and murder for their actions in the Nisour Square massacre, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed and another 20 were seriously injured.

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