Crystal Amber Fund, the largest shareholder in Hurricane Energy (LON: HUR), has moved to appoint Tony Buckingham, an oil baron and ex-mercenary, to its board.
Named one of Jersey’s richest men in 2011, with a £500m fortune, Tony Buckingham has also been known at the FTSE 250’s most famous former mercenary.
A former North Sea diver, and believed to be a former British special forces officer, he has been linked to the private military outfit “Executive Outcomes” set up in West Africa in the 1990s, and its offshoot Sandline International which shipped arms to Sierra Leone.
Tony Buckingham started his oil career at Ranger Oil and Premier Oil and later became an advisor to the Angolan Government.
He set up Heritage Oil in the 1990s with acreage in Angola, and the Guardian reports that Buckingham engaged Executive Outcomes to recover drilling equipment lost when the country was overrun by rebels.
One of the men he worked with through Executive Outcomes, Simon Mann, was later incarcerated in Equatorial Guinea for his role in the Wonga Coup.
Later, a Heritage Oil flotation prospectus would read that Mr Buckingham had “no association” with any private military contractors” since the dissolution of Executive Outcomes”.
It added that Buckingham had no contact with Simon Mann of any nature since the year 2000.
Heritage was bought out in 2014 by a Qatari investment fund for $1.6bn.
The Panama Papers leaks in 2016 uncovered that, in 2010, Jersey-based Heritage Oil attempted to avoid paying £280m of tax to the Ugandan Government when it realised it would be hit by a huge bill.
According to the BBC, Heritage made efforts by moving the country where the company was registered from the Bahamas to Mauritius.
In 2019, Tony Buckingham was named in the Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated net worth of £425m.
The Daily Mail and the Guardian have named him as a Tory Party donor.
Announcing its intent to appoint Buckingham to Hurricane’s board, Crystal Amber said he sees ““substantial potential” within Hurricane’s acreage and that “under the right leadership, Hurricane could attract significant new investment to fund growth opportunities”.