Report: South Sudan’s leaders profit from civil war

South Sudan’s leaders have garnered properties and businesses through several corporations at home and abroad amid the country’s deadly civil war, according to a report released Monday by a U.S. war crimes watchdog group, The Sentry.

The report called on the international community to take tougher actions against the violators.

The group, co-founded by George Clooney and activist John Prendergast, began its investigation nearly two years ago and said it discovered some of the country’s leaders had amassed wealth since the conflict began despite their modest salaries. The investigation involved the country’s President Salva Kiir, former Vice President Riek Machar, and several high-ranking military officials.

“Some have been involved in questionable deals, while others have apparently received large payments from corporations doing business in South Sudan,” the report said.

The report described how the families of Kiir and Machar stayed in luxurious homes outside the country, including homes in an upscale neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya. South Sudan’s Army Chief Paul Malong owns at least two villas in Kampala, Uganda, and a $2 million mansion in a gated Nairobi community, the report revealed. Malong earns roughly $45,000 annually.

The Sentry said family members of top government officials also have stakes in oil and other commercial ventures in South Sudan despite laws that forbid office holders from engaging in business activities outside of government while in office.

“Unexplained wealth such as this should be enough to provide authorities with a reasonable basis for investigating the sources of that wealth and whether any wrongdoing occurred,” the report said.

Machar’s spokesman denied the accusations as lies and said the family did not own any home abroad. Kiir’s spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, also denied the report’s claims, saying people were accusing the president for no reason.

“The president does not even have a bank account, so how do these people arrive at all these?” Ateny told Reuters.

South Sudan fell into a civil war after rivalry between the two warring leaders resulted in violence. The war has displaced some 2.3 million people and left 5 million people in need of food assistance. The United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo said Monday it rescued another 268 people from a national park and cautioned the rising number of South Sudanese could pose a threat to peace in Congo and the subregion. Machar and many of his supporters fled to Congo last month after renewed fighting between his and Kiir’s forces.

Clooney said at a news conference on the report Monday the group plans to lobby U.S. President Barack Obama and other senior administration officials to impose sanctions and freeze the foreign assets of South Sudan’s leaders involved in financial corruption.

The group called on the international community, including other African countries, also to impose asset freezes on the violators and take action against banks that fail to stop illicit transactions.