Aegis Defence Services
 Aegis Defence Services(PMC)    | |
|---|---|
| Formation | 23 September 2002 |
| Founder | •  Tim Spicer• Mark Bullough • Jeffrey Day • Dominic Armstrong |
| Type | • private • military |
| PMC founded in 2002 by Cercle attendee Tim Spicer | |
Aegis Defence Services (ADS), also known as Aegis Specialist Risk Management was founded in London in 2002 by Le Cercle attendee, Tim Spicer along with Mark Bullough, Jeffrey Day and Dominic Armstrong.
Frederick Forsyth, author of "Dogs of War", owned shares in ADS.[1]
Contents
Origins
Aegis Defence Services was set up in 2002 by Le Cercle attendee, Tim Spicer who made headlines with the Sandline affair in the late 1990s when he was caught shipping 30 tons of arms to Sierra Leone in apparent violation of a UN weapons embargo and arrested in the abortive coup in Papua New Guinea. His friends ex-SAS officer Simon Mann, was arrested in Zimbabwe in February 2007 and extradited to Equatorial Guinea on charges of plotting a coup against the EG government. Mann was convicted and sentenced to 34 years imprisonment but pardoned and released "on humanitarian grounds" in November 2009.
Expansion
Aegis Defence Services signed a new contract with the Pentagon worth $145m (£79m) over protests from its American competitors in 2007. This is an extension of the earlier $293 million 'cost plus' contract that it had signed with the Pentagon in May 2003. According to Naomi Klein, the Coalition Provisional Authority contracted with Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and embarrassment." In a separate contract, Aegis also provided security for employees working on the Iraqi 'Oil-for-Food' corruption inquiry. Aegis employs a total of 930 people in Iraq and besides co-ordinating communications between coalition forces, civilian contractors working on reconstruction projects, and their private security firms, it also provides bodyguards for senior American and Iraqi officials. Aegis operates one national and six regional command-centres and acts as a link between coalition forces and civilian contractors on security issues, relaying information on rebel activity.[2]
In 2010, when Aegis Defence Services established a Swiss holding company based in Basel, there was a public and political outcry in Switzerland centred on fears that it would erode Switzerland’s ‘neutrality’. Employing 20,000 mercenaries, who are deployed mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, Aegis is one of the world’s biggest private armies. In January 2012, it was announced that Aegis had been awarded a short-term contract by Switzerland to protect the Swiss embassy in Libya and that Swiss special forces were taking over responsibility for security at the embassy.[3] The Swiss government has since drawn up legislation banning PMCs operating in conflict zones or holding companies in this sector from being based in Switzerland. In April 2014, it was reported that ADS had to quit Switzerland after the introduction of an anti-mercenary law.[4]
Trade associations
In November 2005 Aegis Defence Services applied unsuccessfully to join the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a trade association for PMCs. Aegis' membership bid came just as the IPOA were trying to reposition the industry as for-profit providers of armed men as peace keepers. In a telephone interview with "Corporate Watch", Tim Spicer said he was 'surprised' by IPOA's initial rejection 'especially since we were invited to apply'. Spicer participated in the first annual conference of the British Association of Private Security Companies in October 2006.[5]
Trophy videos in Iraq
- Rod Stoner, a former British army officer and Aegis employee, who worked for the company between 2004 and 2005, posted videos on the internet implicating Aegis in shooting civilians in Iraq. According to a statement from Stoner, “We don’t know whether it was an innocent civilian or whether that was an insurgent—we don’t know, because we never stop.”
- The series of “trophy” videos appear to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on “Route Irish”, a road that links the airport to Baghdad.
- In one of the videos, a car is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes into a taxi. In another, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the car before it comes to a slow stop.
- Despite denying that the videos had anything to do with Aegis employees, the security company got a high court injunction last Friday against Stoner. This closed down the website and prohibited him from speaking to the press.[6]
PR and Lobbying Firms
Aegis are clients of The S.P.A. Way a London-based PR firm run by Sara Pearson.[7] The company claims that it does not charge a fee unless its coverage meets three strict criteria, that it should:
- Be an original piece set up by the Agency
- Be in the agreed media
- Carry a minimum of 2 of the 3 agreed messages[8]
A great deal of coverage of Aegis in the UK media could arguably be seen as fitting these requirements.
Pearson's association with Aegis boss Tim Spicer goes back to 1997 when the two were introduced through Michael Grunberg. Pearson hosted the press conference that took place on Spicer's return to Britain following the Sandline Affair in Papua New Guinea.[9]
People
Board of Directors
- Field Marshal the Lord Inge KG GCB DL: Chairman (Non-executive)
- Keith Henry: Deputy Chairman (Non-executive)
- Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer OBE: Chief Executive
- Mark Bullough: Director
- Jeffrey Day: Director
- Dominic Armstrong: Director
- Brigadier James Ellery CBE: Director
- David Miller: Finance Director
- The Hon. Nicholas Soames MP: Director (Non-executive)
- General Sir Roger Wheeler: GCB CBE: Director (Non-executive)
- Sir John Birch KCVO CMG: Director (Non-executive)
- Robert McFarlane: Director (Non-executive)
Former Directors
- John Davidson: Former Director, Operations
- Richard Slowe: Former Director (Non-executive)
Affiliations
- British Association of Private Security Companies
- Defence Manufacturers' Association
- British Expertise
- Private Security Company Association of Iraq
Resources
- Robert Baer, Iraq's Mercenary King, Vanity Fair, April 2007
- Alec Klein, For Security in Iraq, a Turn to British Know-How, Washington Post, 24 August 2007.
- Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor, Iraq's hired hands under fire as the pot of gold starts to run low, Guardian, 22 September 2007.
- The trophy videos as broadcast on More 4 TV
Employee on Wikispooks
| Employee | Job | Appointed | End |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mark Turnbull | Managing Director, Strategic Communications Practice | April 2013 | April 2015 |
References
- ↑ "Forsyth owned shares in defence contract firm"
- ↑ "Aegis Defence Services Ltd"
- ↑ "Commandos ready to secure Tripoli embassy"
- ↑ "Libya: The Swiss Contracted Aegis To Protect Their Embassy In Libya"
- ↑ "British Association of Private Security Companies"
- ↑ Videos implicate Aegis Socialist Worker > archive > dated 15 April 2006 | issue 1996
- ↑ "The S.P.A. Way - Those Who Pay Us"
- ↑ "The S.P.A. Way - Our Proposition"
- ↑ Tim Spicer, An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair, Mainstream Publishing, 2003, p187-188.
