The United States added one Russia-based entity and one Central African Republic (CAR)-based entity to the sanction list for their involvement in the Wagner Group’s malign activities in Africa.
Sanctions were imposed on a timber company based in CAR, Bois Rouge SARLU, and an LLC based in St Petersburg, Russia, Broker Expert.
According to a statement from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Bois Rouge was just one of many companies linked to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who was the owner of the former Wagner Group and died in an August 2023 plane explosion in Russia.
Bois Rouge received a natural resources concession in exchange for the services the Wagner Group provided in CAR.
Broker Expert (Cyrillic: “ООО БРОКЕР ЭКСПЕРТ”, Adress: Pom. 3N, Liter M, 6, Ul. Tsvetochnaya, St. Petersburg 196084, Russia) has exported goods to several Prigozhin-associated companies, including dozens of shipments to Bois Rouge in CAR, multipurpose vehicles to U.S.-designated Meroe Gold Co. LTD. in Sudan. They have also exported helmets to the Wagner Group’s forces in Ukraine.
