The Al Gunade gold company is owned by three members of the Daglo family: Hemedti’s brother, Abdul Rahim Hamdan Daglo, and Abdul Rahim’s two young sons, while according to the document, Hemedti himself is on the Board of Directors.

When approached by Global Witness a spokesperson for Al Gunade said that Hemedti had ended his formal role in the company in 2009, and that the corporate document hadn’t been updated. The spokesperson denied that Al Gunade provides any financial support to the RSF but did confirm commercial ties between the company and the RSF. He claimed that certain money movements between Al Gunade and would have related to commercial transactions.

Al Gunade and the RSF appear to be deeply intertwined. Al Gunade’s owner, Abdul Rahim Daglo, is widely reported to be the deputy head of the RSF. A Sudanese Ministry of Minerals press release describes a ministerial visit to Jabel Amer, by invitation of Lieutenant Brigadier Abdul Rahim Hamdan Daglo. In former President al-Bashir’s corruption trial Abdul Rahim Hamdan Daglo was said, by President Bashir’s former office manager, to have received five million euros from the former Sudanese dictator, who handed over the funds in the presence of Hemedti.

Abdul Rahim is also alleged to be partly responsible for the 3rd June massacre. The BBC reported an interview with an anonymous RSF officer that an Abdul Rahim Daglo gave the order to clear the Khartoum sit-in – although the BBC was unable to independently corroborate this claim.

A leaked RSF spreadsheet shared with Global Witness by the Sudanese Al Bashoum Facebook page also suggests close links between Al Gunade and the RSF. The RSF seemingly recorded paying 686,000 Dirham (US $186,000) to wire to an individual for payments to China with a reference to Al Gunade in the same spreadsheet line. Another line of the spreadsheet lists a 50,000 Dirham (US $14,000) payment apparently for the debts of Al-Gunade.

These payments suggest a financial link between the company and the paramilitary group. Evidence of the payments are also interesting in the context of independent reports from Sudanese businesspeople with knowledge of the situation, that the Al Gunade company was in debt in the months leading up to and following the ousting of Bashir – the same financial period covered by the spreadsheet.

In response to a separate investigation by Reuters, the company’s General Manager denied any link to the RSF, reportedly saying “Algunade is as far as can be from the RSF.”

Al-Gunade has expanded in recent years, perhaps in part due to its apparent relationship with the RSF. The RSF famously took control over the large Jebel Amer gold mining area in Darfur by force in November 2017. A map from the state-owned Sudanese Mineral Resources Company shows that Al Gunade has the only large concession operational in Darfur, in the vicinity of Jebel Amer. The region has some the largest mineral and gold reserves in the country, according to the Ministry of Minerals.

Al Gunade now operates well beyond Darfur. In addition to Al Gunade’s office in Khartoum the SMRC mining registry lists the firm as active in South Kordofan, while interviews with traders indicate their presence in the northern Sudanese gold markets of Abu Hamad and Alabidia.

Recently, according to Sudanese media organisation Radio Dabanga, protests by local people in the town of Talodi, South Kordofan against the excessive use of mercury contamination around Al Gunade mine sites led to a heavy handed response from the RSF, who arrived in Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser vehicles, reportedly injuring civilian protestors in the ensuing clashes.

In sum, the RSF and a connected company have captured a swathe of the country’s gold industry and are likely using it to fund their operations.

RSF VEHICLES AT RISK OF BEING USED IN HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES WERE BOUGHT IN DUBAI

While the documents discussed above detail some of the sources of the RSF’s economic power, another leaked document sheds light on their military power. This power partly derives from their use of highly mobile units of ‘technicals’ – armed desert vehicles converted from civilian use by welding mounted machine guns on to the back of pick-up trucks.

The leaked RSF spreadsheet seemingly describes how the militia received over 150mn Dirham (US $40 million) ‘for technical support’ from an unknown source, and used over 111mn Dirham (US $30 million) of that to purchase vehicles and communications equipment.

The document suggests that the RSF bought over 1,000 vehicles during the first six months of 2019, from dealers in the UAE. The shipments included over 900 Toyota Hilux and Land Cruisers, models which the RSF frequently converts into ‘technicals’ – 4x4 military vehicles mounted with machine guns.

The spreadsheet helps builds a picture of how the RSF have become Sudan’s most powerful military force. There is no suggestion that Toyota were aware of the use to which these vehicles have been put at the time of their purchase.

THE SPREADSHEET ALSO REVEALS ANOTHER PROBABLE RSF FRONT COMPANY – GSK

One payment made by the RSF is described in the spreadsheet as being made on behalf of GSK Advance, an information technology and security company run by Hemedti’s younger brother Algoney Hamdan Daglo.

According to the spreadsheet several payments were made by the RSF to (or on behalf of) Algoney directly, or to a network of Algoney’s friends and acquaintances who are named in an archived copy of the GSK website as GSK staff members. Some of the line items specify that payments are made by these middlemen on behalf of the RSF (rather than another entity) as part of its procurement activities overseas. Despite repeated contacts, neither GSK, nor Algoney Hamdan Daglo or the middlemen named in the RSF spreadsheet have commented on allegations put to them by Global Witness.

In total, the RSF seems to have paid over 9 million dirhams (US $2.5million) to companies overseas via a network of procurement agents in countries including the UAE, Rwanda, Malaysia and China. Individuals within the network also made visits to Germany, Russia, and the Netherlands, countries to which the spreadsheet shows substantial transfers.

CONCLUSION

Exposing the workings of the RSF’s financial network is a crucial step towards combatting their economic power. If Sudan is to pursue a peaceful democratic transition, it is crucial to ensure civilian oversight of the military spending, and to give the Sudanese people greater control of their own natural resources — that at the moment are dominated by RSF and other security forces within Sudan.

Hemedti sits at the apex of a ‘paramilitary-industrial complex’. He controls both a large powerful military force, and an independent source of wealth. Unless he is removed from this dual position, and all military forces are brought under civilian strategic and financial control, he is an obstacle to the transition to civilian and democratic government that many in Sudan yearn for.





Global Witness contacts: Richard Kent, Nick Donovan, Mohamed Aboelgheit