Amnesty International has accused a Ukrainian state-owned company of trying to violate a UN embargo on arms sales to South Sudan, saying the company sought to supply the African country with thousands of machine guns, mortars, and other weapons.
The British-based rights group said Ukrinmash worked with a U.A.E. company in 2014 to circumvent a United Nations ban on arms sales to the war-torn African state.
The group said it was not able to determine whether some or all of the weapons listed in the contact documents, estimated at $169 million, had been delivered to South Sudan.
But if they were, the group said it would be one of the largest publicly disclosed arms transfers since the outbreak of fighting in South Sudan in December 2013.
Yuriy Kyrylych, a representative of state-run Ukrinmash, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that the company had not, in fact, supplied any weapons and did not plan to.
Amnesty alleged that the Ukrainian and UAE companies sought to use a tiny British-registered company as the supplier in the deal and that the British government has done nothing to clamp down on this or similar arms sales.