The story
Founded by Eeben Barlow in 1989.1
History
Background
In 1989, following the conclusion of the South African Border War in Angola and Namibia, the apartheid government was looking at broad cuts in its military personnel. This initial drawdown accelerated rapidly as the apartheid system was dismantled in the early 1990s. African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela demanded that then South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk dismantle some of the South African and South West African Special Forces units such as 32 Battalion and Koevoet. One of these was the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), a unit that carried out covert operations which included assassinations of government opponents, and worked to bypass the United Nations apartheid sanctions by setting up overseas front companies.
Only Koevoet, being part of the South West African Police (SWAPOL), was disbanded as part of independence negotiations for South West Africa (now Namibia). Many members of the other units, or simply former national servicemen, were recruited by Executive Outcomes (EO).
Formation
Eeben Barlow and Michael Mullen, formerly in charge of the Western European section of the CCB, established Executive Outcomes (EO) in 1989. Its aim was to provide specialised covert training to Special Forces members. Barlow was also awarded a contract by Debswana to train a selected group of security officers to infiltrate and penetrate the illegal diamond dealing syndicates in Botswana. When Debswana discovered EO was training the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), it promptly cancelled EO's contract.
"Many of Barlow's Special Forces students would later join him at EO after he started recruiting men to assist with the training of the Angolan forces," says Walter Halicki, one of Eeben's associates in the FAA.
The company also went on to recruit many of its personnel from the units President F. W. De Klerk disbanded. Even former enemy fighters of the uMkhonto we Sizwe and Azanian People's Liberation Army were recruited as well since many were found out of work after their own restructuring and integration to the South African National Defense Force. At its peak, EO employed about 2,000 former soldiers.
Barlow registered Executive Outcomes Ltd in the UK on the insistence of the South African Reserve Bank. There is some confusion over this issue as a top secret British intelligence report states that "Executive Outcomes was registered in the UK in September 1993 by Anthony (Tony) Buckingham, a British businessman and Simon Mann, a former British officer". Buckingham denies that he registered EO in London and consistently denies any "corporate ties" to EO.
Key personnel
Apart from founder Eeben Barlow (CEO), other senior EO personnel were Lafras Luitingh (Deputy to CEO) and Nic van der Bergh (CEO after Barlow resigned). Senior associates included Simon Mann, Tony Buckingham and Derek Williams who, along with Barlow and Luitingh were the executive officers of Ibis Air, the aircraft procurement organisation for Executive Outcomes which was essentially their private "air force". Crause Steyl was the South African-based director of Ibis Air.
Reestablishment
In November 2020, founder Eeben Barlow stepped down from his position as chairman of STTEP to restart Executive Outcomes. He mentioned that part of his company's mission would now be "to expose those media and intelligence whores that thrive on lying for secret payments." Barlow claimed that the decision to restart the company came at the request of "some Africa [sic] governments", which he had "little choice but to accept."
From Wikipedia’s article on Executive Outcomes, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4