According to a report published by The Sentry, South Sudan leaders have accumulated millions of dollars over years of the country’s civil war. President Salva Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar have laundered millions of dollars into bank accounts and real estate in Kenya, Uganda, and Australia.
With half the country’s population displaced and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the families of Kiir and Machar enriched themselves with shares in local oil, construction, security, and gambling businesses. The leaders, seeking to pad their profits through the conflict, fomented the civil war themselves by exploiting ethnic divisions within the country. Fomenting a war for one own’s interest? Sound familiar?
The conflict in South Sudan is not the first time war has lined the pockets of those at the top and it won’t be the last.
