and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts,” and “be deployed if the Emirates face[] unrest in their crowded labor camps or [a]re challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world.”197 Prince is thus put in charge of a substantial percentage of the Emirates’ military operations.
The mercenary’s broadest mandate, however—and a significant basis for the $529 million the UAE is paying him—is to “blunt the regional aggression of Iran, the country’s biggest foe.”198 That Prince’s official brief should be this broad is indicative of a sea change in military logistics that arrives in the Middle East with the twenty-first century. According to the New York Times, in hiring Prince to develop a battalion of foreign soldiers on Emirati soil, “the Emiratis have begun a new era in the boom in wartime contracting that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And by relying on a force largely created by Americans, they have introduced a volatile element in an already combustible region where the United States is widely viewed with suspicion.”199 An open question, however, is whether Prince’s army—which includes American, Colombian, South African, British, and French guns-for-hire, among those of other nations—violates federal laws prohibiting U.S. citizens from training foreign soldiers without first securing a license from the State Department.200 While it’s unclear if Prince secures such a license in 2010, it is known that in the twelve years from its founding in 1997 to 2009, the company Prince formerly ran, Blackwater, paid $42 million in fines for illegally training foreign troops around the world.201
In keeping with MBZ’s concerns about Muslim soldiers, Prince has, by 2010, established a strict “no Muslims” policy for his mercenary army, and is hoping, per the New York Times, to “build an empire in the desert, far from … trial lawyers, Congressional investigators and Justice Department officials.”202 One of the contracts he signs upon moving to the UAE, in addition to his $529 million contract with MBZ, is a multimillion-dollar contract to provide security “to protect a string of planned nuclear power plants,” an arrangement that gives Prince a vested interest in the spread of nuclear power to nations in the Middle East currently prohibited from enriching uranium even for civilian use; it also suggests that by 2010 the Emirates is already transitioning away from its prior stance regarding the dangers of new uranium enrichment in the Middle East.203 Prince also anticipates earning “billions more” than he will receive under these two contracts by “opening a giant complex where his company can train troops for other governments” besides the royal court in Abu Dhabi.204 In the meantime, Prince hides his involvement in all of these ventures by refusing to sign any contracts personally and by asking his subordinates to refer to him by the code name “Kingfish.”205 Many of his dozens of American, European, and South African trainers don’t even know that Prince is involved in their operations—as he rarely visits the compound he’s built, in an effort to avoid being seen even by his own employees.206 He also regularly changes the name of his company to avoid its operations being tracked, an approach he had also taken with his disgraced Blackwater outfit.207
ANNOTATIONS
How Trump came to Rybolovlev’s attention in the first instance is unknown, though recent investigations suggest a connection to Trump’s longtime, Kremlin-connected rainmaker, Felix Sater—a man who had by the time of the Trump-Rybolovlev sale spent years attracting Russian business clients to Trump properties.
In 2008, the year of the Trump-Rybolovlev real estate deal in Florida, Larisa Markus and Georgy Bedzhamov, co-owners of the Russian bank Vneshprombank, begin setting up shell companies with the assistance of a Russian accountant named Ilya Bykov.208 According to the Real Deal, a widely respected New York City real estate trade publication, Markus and Bedzhamov will by late 2015 stand accused of using the shell companies they have set up (with Bykov’s help) to launder money for Russian companies (including Russia’s state-owned oil company, Rosneft) and prominent figures (including Russia’s minister of defense and deputy prime minister).209 The same month that Markus is arrested and Bedzhamov flees Russia to avoid arrest, Trump’s business partner Sater partners with Bykov on a multimillion-dollar real estate deal in New York. Bykov is also, at the time of his partnership with Sater, an accountant for Aras Aglarov, Trump’s business partner in a potential “Trump Tower Moscow” deal.
In May 2016, months after Sater’s partnership with Aras Agalarov’s accountant begins, Dmitry Rybolovlev intercedes to help Georgy Bedzhamov (who has been arrested