Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin made $250 million in natural resource extraction profits in the four years leading up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times reported , citing corporate documents. As shown by the investigation conducted by the publication, Prigozhin, against whom Western countries have imposed sanctions, earns on the extraction of oil, gas, diamonds and gold in Africa and the Middle East.
FT journalists studied the bank accounts of companies associated with the Wagner PMC, both those that are under sanctions and those that are not. At the same time, the investigators did not touch upon Prigozhin's business in Russia.
Yevgeny Prigozhin was first included in the US sanctions list in December 2016. In 2021, the FBI put him on the list of the most wanted criminals. As the FT notes, all this did little harm to Prigozhin's mining business. As an example, the publication cites the Euro Polis company associated with the Russian, which received a concession in the Syrian energy sector from the government of Bashar al-Assad in exchange for the services of PMC Wagner: mercenaries liberated several oil fields seized by the Islamic State. Euro Polis has been under sanctions since 2018, which did not prevent the company from receiving $90 million in net profit in 2020. Business structures associated with Prigogine continue to operate in Sudan and the Central African Republic.
In January, the US Treasury Department declared the Wagner PMC a transnational criminal organization involved in "criminal activities, including mass executions, rape, child abduction and physical abuse."