Philippe Heilberg, a former commodity trader who heads Jarch Management, an investment company, became one of Africa’s biggest private landowners when he signed a deal to lease 1 million acres of fertile and potentially oil-rich land in Sudan in 2009. A follow-up deal reportedly doubled his holdings.
General Paulino Matip, a warlord from the Nuer tribe backed by the North in Sudan’s 22-year civil war, accused by human rights groups of atrocities, granted the lease in Unity State.
General Matip’s son, Gabriel, is Mr Heilberg’s joint-venture partner though his company Leac for Agriculture and Investment.
In an interview last year Mr Heilberg was candid about the way he does business, describing dealing with warlords as “going to the guns”.
“This is Africa,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “The whole place is like one big mafia. I’m like a mafia head.” When contacted, Jarch Management told The Times: “Mr Heilberg no longer does interviews.”
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For villagers in the area, the sale of the land, which may force them to move, is a shock, say aid workers. “The community knew nothing, it was done secretly between Philippe Heilberg and Paulino Matip’s family,” said one.
Mr Heilberg has said in the past that he plans to grow food for sale to local and international markets and that 10 per cent of profits would go back to the community.
High-profile appointees to Jarch’s management have included former US ambassadors and spies. Its Advisory Board is a who’s who of Sudan’s warlords, many of whom led insurgencies against the South.