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By Miriam Raftery
Photo, left: Erik Prince in 2015, cc-2.0 via Wikipedia
July 27, 2023 (San Diego) — The name Erik Prince became familiar to many residents in San Diego’s East County when Blackwater, the private military contracting firm he founded, sought to build a paramilitary training camp in Potrero.
Now Austria has indicted Prince for alleged arms trafficking to Libya in violation of a United Nations arms embargo; at least one shipment of explosives reportedly went through Austria using an Austrian business, BNN reports. Prince is accused of organizing a covert military operation to supply Libyan warlord Khalifa Hafter with war equipment for rebellion against a government backed by the U.S. and the U.N.
If convicted, Prince could face up to five years in prison. However, it is unclear whether or not he will be extradited to Austria; Prince holds residency in both the U.S. and Abu Dhabi. Prince has denied UN allegations of arms peddling to Libya.
Photo, right: Potrero residents protested against Blackwater in June 2008
The local Potrero project drew massive opposition on environmental grounds as well as the many controversies involving Blackwater, which Prince was CEO and chairman of at the time. The Harris Fire in October 2007 displaced many residents, but that didn’t stop them from showing up to vote and recall all five community planning group members who had voted for the project, which sparked national news headlines.
The 2007 firestorms scorched Round Potrero Valley, where Blackwater planned to store ammunition and a bunkhouse with 200 men in the box valley with only one exit.
Blackwater ultimately dropped plans for the Potrero facility in 2008, ostensibly due to noise mediation requirements, although those had not changed since the project’s inception.
Prince, a former Navy Seal before founding Blackwater in 2009, is no stranger to controversy. Three Blackwater guards were convicted in 2014 of manslaughter and another of murder in charges stemming from the massacre of civilians in Baghdad’s Nissour Square in 2007. In March 2009, Prince resigned as Blackwater’s CEO but remained chairman of the board until the company’s sale in late 2010.
Blackwater’s successor company, Academi, was accused of arms trafficking in 2012 dating back to when Prince served as CEO and Chairman. Then in 2020, the FBI investigated Prince for arms trafficking involving crop duster planes converted for military use.
He moved to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in 2010, where he was hired by the crown prince to organize foreign troops for the UAE and formed a new firm called Reflect Responses, or R2. He later trained Somalis in anti-piracy operations with UAE funding.
Prince also leads a private equity firm, Frontier Resources Group and until April 2021, chaired Frontier Services Group Ltd., which had various business dealings in Africa.
Prince also drew controversy over revelations that he lied to the House Intelligence Committee in Nov. 2017 about his involvement in the Trump transition team and was at a Trump Tower meeting that allegedly had backchannel communications with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Special Counsel in 2018 found evidence contradicting Prince, the Washington Post reported. The House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department which announced in 2020 that it had opened an investigation into Prince’s alleged perjury during his testimony.
Politically well connected, Prince is the sister of Betsy DeVos, former Secretary of Education under President Donald Trump, and has been a major donor to numerous Republican candidates and a Trump-aligned super-pac.
He is also vice president of the Prince Foundation and founder of the Freiheit Foundation, a nonprofit charity funding conservative causes. The foundation lost over half its assets due to investment in Seligman New Technologies Fund, whose manager was accused of illegal market activities.
Prince has engaged in some charitable endeavors, including building an orphanage in war-torn Afghanistan. He has been married three times; his current wife, Stacy DeLuke, is a former Blackwater spokesperson.
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