A Dubai Firm Pledged $13 Billion for 20 Years of South Sudan Oil
The loan from an obscure UAE company may tie up most of South Sudan’s oil revenues for many years, UN investigators say.
Spent munitions at an abandoned oil facility in Unity State, South Sudan. The oil-dependent country has been ravaged by famine and conflict.
Photographer: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images.
A little-known company run by a distant relative of the Abu Dhabi royal family agreed to lend 12 billion euros ($12.9 billion) to South Sudan in exchange for repayment in oil, making it one of the largest ever oil-for-cash deals and the latest such intervention in a struggling African country.
According to an unpublished report by a United Nations Security Council-appointed panel of investigators reviewed by Bloomberg, the Dubai-based Hamad Bin Khalifa Department of Projects, or HBK DOP, and South Sudan’s then-finance minister Bak Barnaba Chol appear to have agreed to the terms of the loan in documents signed between December and February.