lørdag 2. februar 2019

Erik Prince-linked security company announces investment in Xinjiang


A company that counts former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince among its investors said it plans to build a "training center" in China's far western region of Xinjiang, an area where the Chinese government is accused of carrying out a wide-ranging security clampdown targeting Muslim minority groups.

Frontier Services Group (FSG), a Hong Kong-based company which specializes in providing security, logistics and insurance for businesses operating in hostile environments, made the announcement in a Chinese-language news release posted to its website. The release, which provided few details about the training center itself, detailed a handful of deals announced between local authorities and CITIC, a massive Chinese conglomerate that is the biggest stakeholder in FSG. The release has since been pulled from FSG's homepage, though a cached version remains viewable.

A spokesperson for Prince and FSG told CNN that the former US Navy SEAL, who is the brother of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, "had no knowledge or involvement whatsoever with this preliminary memorandum regarding the company's activity in Xinjiang."