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Blackwater Founder, Needing 'Break from America,' Moves to Abu Dhabi, Records Say
WASHINGTON - Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents.
Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and an heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune, left the country after a series of civil lawsuits, criminal charges and Congressional investigations singled out Blackwater or its former executives and other personnel. His company, now called Xe Services, has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States government since 2001.
Current and former colleagues said Mr. Prince hoped to focus on security work from governments in Africa and the Middle East. They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received.
"He needs a break from America," said one colleague, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about Mr. Prince's long-rumored move.
Mr. Prince does not face any criminal charges, but five former top company executives have been indicted on federal weapons, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Two guards who worked for a Blackwater-affiliated company face murder charges from a 2009 shooting in Afghanistan, and the Justice Department is trying to revive its prosecution of five former Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.
Over the past several years, Congress has also conducted a series of investigations of Blackwater's activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including an inquiry by the House Intelligence Committee into the company's involvement in a proposed Central Intelligence Agency assassination program.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr. Prince, declined to comment about Mr. Prince's move. Richard L. Beizer, a Washington lawyer representing Mr. Prince in a civil case, did not respond to requests for comment.
Full article here.
38 Comments so far
Show AllPoor Erik Prince (of Darkness?).
Providing security "services" as a religious crusade must be difficult on any multi-millionaire.
The good news is that, legally, you're immune from facing charges for policies & practices of Xe-Blackwater. The not so good news is that, like everyone else, you can't take a break from judgment by the same God you claim to serve.
Does anyone know if this paragon of evil has surrendered his passport? Is he still extraditable? Will he be forced to surrender his lucrative contracts with the DoD or State if he is a fugitive?
Abu Dhabi doesn't extradite....same reason that Halliburton moved it's headquarters from Houston to Dubai a few years ago. They're already out of reach, if things ever hit the fan. Unless, of course, the Administration decides to keep the Bush playbook open and use "extraordinary rendition".
Re: "Unless, of course, the Administration decides to keep the Bush playbook open and use "extraordinary rendition"."
I'm savoring the irony. Thanks for the note of hope. :)
Oh, that play book is wide open!
Wait a minute. Doesn't Obama claim the right to summarily execute anyone, anywhere in the world, including US citizens? Time to launch another predator drone!
"Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and an heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune,"
Should have stuck to the auto industry. Could have run the company into the ground, cashed in on the bailout and lived happily ever after. No negative publicity there.
Didn't the US Military vaporize/turn-to-ash a city of +/- 400,000 souls cuz four of his mercenary thugs/gangsters/murders got barBQ'd and pinata'd on a bridge???
Aaaahhhh... Murkin Justice! "I love the smell of White Phosphorous and Depleted Uranium in the morning".
"Mr. Prince doesn't face any criminal charges,"? Really! What happened to the allegations leveled at Mr. Prince by two former Blackwater employees that he participated in or had former Blackwater employees murdered who were going to testify against the company? What is this? More of the Obama/Holder Justice Department Hocus-Pocus nothing to see here folks, move along now! If this man was under investigation, how in the hell did the Justice Department let him leave the country, especially to a country we don't have an extradition treaty with?
Money answers everything.
Come on, "Let's not look at the past, let's just look to the future!"
The guy is in a TAX HAVEN and will not be shipped back to the states for any prosecution......I am sure most of his murderers are from "Death Squads of South America" and they were probably given, as a present from Obama, citizenship in the United States and probably guarding some of those "Deep Underground MIlitary Bases" ready to shoot any American trying to get in!
I'm sure he will be more happy among his own kind in Abu Dhabi...
he is hatching privatization of democracy that will come back to america from the rezims he is going to serve
edweg
The Prince is leaving ship: he's abandoning the Greatest Country in the World, the home of the new crusaders, for the Islamic world!
What happened to his undivided love of country and of the Christian God?
Does this not verge on being a treasonous act?
There is no shortage of thugs to execute the empire agenda to maximally plunder planetary resources. They're expendable.
Jeremy Scahill broke this story 2 months ago.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/blackwaters-erik-prince-moving-united-arab-emirates
"They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received."
Spoken like a true violent megalomaniacal psychopath, po'd because he got caught.
"America, love it or leave it?"
I am skeptical of these stories. This fellow is a Muslim hater and what would he be doing in Abu Dhabi anyway ?
Good question. Very good question.
In the event you haven't read far enough into the responses, the answer to the question is clear: Abu Dhabi does not extradite.
Plus, he'd kind of disappear among all the other ultra-rich.
Com'on now - Muslim hating is only his "day job"... it fills the offshore accounts.
His untimate passion is Loving Money and he will find many kindred spirits there, Muslims et al.
Corporations work for the highest bidder.
How long before Xe turns its sights toward our soldiers?
A "break"? Abu Dhabi doesn't extradite, does it?
Read that fleeing from the long arm of the law.
Erik Prince needs a break from America?
AMERICA needs a break from Erik Prince and Blackwater/Xe, and American taxpayers DEFINITELY need a break from funding his expensive criminal enterprise!
If a war is worth fighting, people will voluntarily enlist en masse. If not enough people voluntarily enlist, it's a good sign that we shouldn't be fighting it.
Will Mr. Prince be safe walking on Middle Eastern streets? I guess that's his problem. . .in the spirit of Mark Twain, I would read his obit with pleasure.
Has an eerily similar arrogant countenance as fellow scumbag Tony Hayward, who also needed " a break" wanting to get his "life back" from the little people.
Mr. Hayward destroys almost the same square mileage of marine life (gulf of Mexico)just as Mr. Prince destroys a similar square mileage of terrestrial & human life (Iraq/AfPak). Weird parallel.
Wonder why he didn't want to "take a break from America" and vacation in the second America-Israel.
Let Abu Dhabi have his evil ass!
Since when does "break" mean "avoid extradition"?
Among other things, Prince has been accused of the murder of two Americans on American soil. His buddies may be getting tired of covering for him.
Good riddance.
I hope when he returns, it's on criminal charges that have him swimming upriver to San Quentin or ADX Florence for the rest of his life.
Let Erik Prince take Xe (or Blackwater, if you will) with him, and after that let the Feds cancel all their contracts with that criminal entity.
I don't have much time for this because the black SUVs are scratching at the doors of my new condo and my fellow secret service marms have been smitten by a shopping bug that has rendered them inactive in the aisles of the local fish market breathing in the sounds of torture and Wagner.
My late husband once told me of his time in the nether regions of the world's greatest economy where the poor were used for bait and the meat they procured caused a riot at the latest soiree of the greatest literary gathering of wealthy diversionary titles since Blenheim Palace was a mere mote in the eye of Emma Goldman whom even the wealthy adored like those adorable Thoreau quotes in Golfing and Real Estate magazines. Life goes on, with or without the massacres of the nameless.
But I do go on, and with so much nonsense that even I cannot understand why this man, this Prince, didn't follow the advice of his grand mama, a wonderful old slut of the ruling Christian Reformed here in West Michigan, when she said: "Get out of the toilet Eric honey, those frogs you killed with M80s weren't worth a hill of beans and I should know, my minister was from South Africa, where those that ain't our equals plunder the groceries every Friday with their songs and their stink. We just ignored them honey, even as they died gruesome deaths, because we knew we were the chosen of God!" and so he came warily out of the water closet with his johnny in hand and all the DeVoses clapped clapped clapped because they knew their soap would buy them a war or two... and an in-law who could do the job when the oil was running too low to pepper their pools and their Dutch pasta (a nasty glop filtered through greed and a predisposition for anal warts)
Thank God for the little brown people! Where else would Eric have learned his video game kill skills? Why, Richard DeVos himself gave Prince a gaggle of Mexicans to practice murder on in the back yard of the estate in West Michigan. Eric had a little trouble dismembering the children, but once he got the hang of it he was gleeful in his blood swimming pool. You should see the pictures! All smiles and innards for the King... and the bowing politicians from every one of the two flanges of the plutocracy! It was marvelous dahlings, I tell you, simply mahvelous! What an elected official will not suckle for a guaranteed throbbing prick of death and a few good TV ads!
So let poor Eric recede into the Abu Dhabi distances, where the un named brown people will be provided to him for his regular kill games and his haircut will stay as retarded as his reasons for living!
thank you thank you bobv. could not have said it all better myself. thanks for connecting all those gruesome dots.it was marvelous dahling! i will look forward to any of your comments here or anywhere. does anyone remember the prince's testimony to congress? read 'graymailing'. we wondered how they would respond? well now we have it! by looking the other way when he snuck out.
… surely you must have mistaken me for that snail eater from the swamps of Normandy, for you could not have mistaken my missive for the frogs that turn against our great nation of Christian pie-faced fatties who slipped on their own excrement on the way to the chapel of the walled-off version of what we know of love.
And what do we know of love? Not much if you could judge it by what those miserable sinners do on market day down in old Baghdad or what remains of Baghdad after Prince got through dismembering goats and Humvees there. Still... I appreciate your valor in apprising me of testimonials by confused billionaires who think their wallets equal the gold fields of the Lord!
The Lord! Hardly have I said the word than that rough beast emerges from the rivers of Pakistan to roar above the huddled masses of those who have drowned in drone attacks and bad damns, god damns. So... if none of this makes an iota of sense to you, just listen to the tongues spoken by The FOX and The CNN and all the Dr. Laura's and Rush's and Glenns in the world... for they have been sent among thee to make fools of thine enemies the Democrats by calling them out of the woodwork in their bologna to make ridiculous suppositions about how indecisive and waffling they are, while the rest of us are more than willing to stand in the country of our love, someplace in Kansas, to destroy the waters and fart in the name of love! Amen!
He's anti-American I say. Not only that, but he's the religious extremist leader and planner for a non-military fighting force (terrorist?), and he's in possession of WMD's. M Maybe he should be droned?
I'd say we need a break from Mr Prince. Mercenaries know no country, and his move makes that clear. He's no patriot, but instead a parasite.
Good riddance to him and his ilk!