# Branch Energy The mining company at the centre of the most durable unproven claim in the conflict-minerals literature — and the reason this page exists. Branch Energy operated out of **Plaza 107, 535 Kings Road, Chelsea**, sharing telephone numbers and UK directors with Heritage Oil, Branch Minerals, DiamondWorks and, from 1996, [[Sandline International]]. Khareen Pech's investigative account puts its holdings across **six countries — Angola, Uganda, north-eastern Kenya, Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Tanzania — covering some 35,000 km²**. Its Sierra Leone asset was the **Koindu lease in Kono district, reserves valued at $1.2 billion**, structured Branch Energy 60% / government 30% / local 10%, and **finalised in July 1995 — shortly after the [[Executive Outcomes]] contract was negotiated** and weeks after EO's operation retook Kono. ## The claim, and what actually supports it > [!warning] Do not state "Executive Outcomes was paid in Branch Energy diamond concessions" as fact > **Asserted:** the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission says EO "was paid by the NPRC partly in cash and partly in mining concessions granted to Branch Energy." > **Hedged by specialists:** the Institute for Security Studies found it "difficult to prove that there was a formal business link between EO and Branch Energy" and that "the exact manner of payment... remains unclear." > **Called speculation:** a 2020 academic review treats it as such explicitly. > **Contradicted:** GlobalSecurity records EO as paid in cash and still owed a substantial sum in 1998. > **Denied:** by Branch Energy and DiamondWorks. > > The claim originates with **Pech**, whose evidence was 100-plus interviews and corporate and bank records that she states could not be attributed openly. **Its originator cannot show her work**, and no disclosed document has ever substantiated it. What *is* documented, and is arguably more damning than the myth: **the group's principals held equity in the mines its affiliated security firms were guarding.** [[Tony Buckingham]] controlled DiamondWorks; Tim Spicer and Eeben Barlow held shares in it; DiamondWorks held six Sierra Leone diamond properties; and **LifeGuard Security**, staffed by former EO personnel, guarded them. The formal diamond sector's minor recovery in the late 1990s is attributed in the literature largely to that protection. That is a vertically integrated war economy, established without anyone needing to be handed a concession as a fee. ## Why the page matters Because the unproven version is the one that travels. "Mercenaries paid in blood diamonds" is a clean story that has shaped two decades of writing about private military companies. The documented version — **shared directors, coincident timing, and armed protection of assets the same people owned** — is messier, better evidenced, and structurally more interesting. See [[Security-for-Minerals]]. ## See also [[Executive Outcomes]] · [[Sandline International]] · [[Tony Buckingham]] · [[Security-for-Minerals]] · [[Blood Diamonds]] · [[Sierra Leone Civil War]]