The United States has imposed sanctions on a network of several persons and entities charged of hiring South American contractors to support and educate a armed faction in Sudan that Washington accuses of committing genocide.
Disclosing the restrictions on this week, the US Treasury Department stated the network was primarily made up of individuals and businesses from Colombia.
Scores of ex-soldiers from Colombia have been recruited to go to the conflict in Sudan to operate with the RSF paramilitary group, a faction linked to terrible atrocities encompassing massacres based on ethnicity and large-scale abductions.
The participation of ex-soldiers initially emerged in 2024, following an investigation which revealed that more than 300 retired troops had been hired to engage in combat – an discovery that led to an rare mea culpa from Colombia’s foreign ministry.
These South American veterans have widely regarded as some of the most in-demand contractors globally due to their vast combat experience acquired during a long-running domestic war, training on Western military gear, and superior tactical education.
In the Sudanese theater, the contractors have been accused of teaching underage fighters, taught fighters to pilot drones, and engaged in frontline combat. An individual involved remarked that working with child soldiers was "awful and crazy" but added that "sadly, that is the nature of conflict".
Among those targeted was a retired Colombian officer, a citizen of both Colombia and Italy and ex-soldier operating from the United Arab Emirates. The government accused him a central role in recruiting and deploying former Colombian soldiers to Sudan. His spouse, Claudia Oliveros, was also sanctioned.
Also on the sanctions list was Mateo Andrés Duque Botero, a dual national who authorities say ran a firm implicated in managing finances and payments for the scheme. "Over the past two years, US-based firms associated with Duque carried out multiple financial transactions, totalling millions of US dollars," the official announcement stated.
Individual Mónica Muñoz was the final person to be penalized, with the entity she oversaw said to have conducted money transfers connected to Duque and his operations.
"Washington reiterates its demand for outside forces to stop giving financial and military support to the belligerents," the Treasury announced.
A senior analyst, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, called the sanctions as a "major" step, stating that "targeting the enablers is the right way to go".
She added that, the Colombian government recently passed a piece of legislation approving the anti-mercenary convention, designed to limit its citizens' long history in international fights and change national security policy.
Another expert, a scholar on the subject, advised additional measures, saying that "penalties are required yet incomplete for addressing the growing mercenary trade".
"It operates in the black market and based out of the UAE, which is largely insulated from sanctions," he stated. The UAE has been repeatedly implicated of arming the RSF, allegations it disputes. "More contractors from Colombia are likely," he advised.
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