# Sandline International Tim Spicer's London private military company, operational from the mid-1990s until it ceased all operations on **16 April 2004**. Two contracts brought down a government and nearly a British foreign secretary. ## Papua New Guinea, 1997 — the cleanest mining link in the lineage The **Panguna copper mine** on Bougainville, one of the largest in the world, had closed in May 1989 after landowner sabotage and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army's insurgency. On **31 January 1997** Prime Minister Julius Chan signed a **$36 million** contract with Sandline to eliminate the rebels and reopen it. The structure is worth stating carefully, because it inverts the usual reading of [[Security-for-Minerals]]: the plan was for **the PNG government itself to purchase the controlling share in Panguna and operate the mine** once the military operation had restored control. The mine was the war aim and the intended fiscal payoff — **not** the contractor's fee. It collapsed publicly. A journalist exposed the contract on 18 February; on **17 March 1997** the PNG defence force commander, Brigadier General Jerry Singirok, announced on radio that he had aborted the operation, and **Operation Rausim Kwik** detained and deported the Sandline personnel. Singirok was sacked the same night; the Chan government fell at the following election. > [!note] The heroic version has a hole in it > Commission evidence later showed that **Singirok "was involved in the dealings with Sandline from the beginning"** — which complicates the conscience narrative that made him a national figure. ## Sierra Leone, 1998 — the Arms-to-Africa affair **Project Python**: a **$10 million** contract, roughly 55 personnel and five helicopters, to help restore President Kabbah against the Koroma junta. UN Security Council Resolution 1132 of October 1997 — **drafted by Britain** — barred supply of "arms and related matériel of all types." British Customs opened an investigation in February 1998. The **Legg inquiry** examined 102 intelligence reports and **cleared ministers** of collusion while finding that Foreign Office officials at multiple levels knew and failed to inform the Foreign Secretary. UN lawyers later held that ECOMOG was exempt from the embargo — a finding the Foreign Office avoided addressing by covertly supporting Sandline instead. The financing is the diamond angle, and it is thinner than usually reported. **Rakesh Saxena**, an Indian national wanted for embezzlement in Thailand, put up **$1.5 million** for personnel and start-up and was to provide **$3.5 million** for equipment. He was arrested by the RCMP on passport charges as he was about to hand over the second tranche, and Sandline funded it itself. The claim that Saxena was **promised diamond concessions** in return appears in one specialist account and is otherwise thinly sourced — the best-documented record shows only consultancy fees and a *bauxite* concession. Treat with caution. ## The network Sandline shared the Chelsea address and directors with Heritage Oil, [[Branch Energy]] and DiamondWorks; Spicer held DiamondWorks shares from its late-1996 formation. After the 1997 coup Sandline acquired **LifeGuard Security**, which nominally severed the formal association with [[Executive Outcomes]] while employing its people — and which guarded Sierra Rutile and Kono, the income-generating assets. That is the structure worth remembering: **the same network fought for the government, then guarded the mines, in which its principals held equity.** See [[Tony Buckingham]]. ## See also [[Executive Outcomes]] · [[Branch Energy]] · [[Tony Buckingham]] · [[Security-for-Minerals]] · [[Sierra Leone Civil War]]