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Three Canadian mining companies in Mali are indirectly helping its government finance the cost of Russian mercenaries who have been implicated in massacres and other atrocities in the country, a new report says.
Mali’s military junta, which came to power in a series of coups in 2020 and 2021, is paying a reported US$10-million a month to the Wagner Group, a Russian military contractor, in exchange for the deployment of an estimated 1,000 soldiers in the West African country.
By June this year, those payments had amounted to more than US$200-million, according to the Blood Gold Report, a 62-page report published Tuesday.
Human-rights groups and other analysts have accused Wagner of complicity in massacres of civilians in Mali, often in collaboration with the country’s army. The Russian mercenaries and Malian forces executed as many as 500 civilians in the town of Moura last year, according to reports by human-rights groups.
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