February 27th 2020 (Nyamilepedia) – The United States Treasury Department has lifted sanctions on former IDF general Israel Ziv and his company Global CST after over a year on following allegations that he sold millions of dollars of arms to South Sudan during its civil war,
There was no reason provided by the Treasury Department over why Ziv and his consulting firm Global CST was removed from the list of Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN).
The Treasury Department sanctioned Ziv and two others in December 2018 over their roles in the country’s civil war saying that Ziv, the former Head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate, used legal entities as a cover for weapons which extended the length of the conflict in South Sudan.
“Ziv used an agricultural company that was nominally present in South Sudan to carry out agricultural and housing projects for the Government of South Sudan as a cover for the sale of approximately $150 million worth of weapons to the government, including rifles, grenade launchers and shoulder-fired rockets,” read the statement at the time.
According to the statement, Ziv was paid through the country’s oil industry as he had close collaboration with a major multi-national oil firm. He is also said to have “maintained the loyalty of senior Government of South Sudan officials through bribery and promises of security support, he has also reportedly planned to organize attacks by mercenaries on South Sudanese oil fields and infrastructure, in an effort to create a problem that only his company and affiliates could solve.”
The department also designated three of Ziv’s Israeli companies: Global N.T.M Ltd, Global Law Enforcement and Security Ltd, and Global IZ Group Ltd.
Ziv vehemently denied the American allegations, telling The Post that he and his company had nothing to hide and invited authorities to visit his company’s projects to see that the allegations can be easily proven as false.
When the sanctions were announced “it was like an atomic bomb falling on me, or like a hit and run by a large truck when the sanctions came. There’s not one single night I don’t go to sleep wondering where these allegations came from, and wake up every day asking it,” Ziv said at the time.
“If even one percent of what they say is correct, I should be imprisoned in Israel. If it’s true then I was going against Israeli law since I never had a permit to sell weapons…my company never ever supplied any weapons to any South Sudanese.”
