Report: Blackwater CEO Tried to Sell Armed Planes to South Sudan

Erik Prince, the former head of the mercenary firm Blackwater, is now the CEO of Frontier Services Group (FSG), which provides logistics and aviation services to Chinese companies in Africa.

A new report from The Intercept shows that Prince has sought to retrofit agricultural planes with surveillance equipment and weapons, and export them to South Sudan. But to do so, he had to evade the detection of European countries and his own company. 

FSG is a publicly traded company in Hong Kong that does not officially broker or provide defense services. In a statement issued on March 30, 2016, the company said: "FSG has had bright line policies against providing defense services involving U.S. persons or U.S. technology."

But an employee at Airborne Technology, an Austrian company, who is not named in the investigation, said Prince commissioned the company to attach unique surveillance equipment to two Thrush aircraft along with machine guns, armor, and other weapons.

Matthew Cole, an investigative journalist for The Intercept, joins The Takeaway to explain how Prince tried to get around international law and sell these planes to South Sudan in the middle of an intensifying civil war.