What is Erik Prince's net worth? Trump ally who violated UN arms embargo donated $250,000 to his 2016 campaign
American businessman Erik Prince was known for his ardent support of ex-POTUS Donald Trump. As a former US Navy SEAL, and the founder and owner of the military company XE, Price had to step down as its head in 2009, following the company coming under scrutiny. Recently, Price made headlines again for violating a United Nations arms embargo when it was found he had supplied arms and ammunition to a militant leader in Libya. With his business and legacy at stake again, let's take a look at his net worth.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Prince, who is also the brother of former US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is currently valued at $2 billion net worth. Most of his earnings stemmed from his military company, Blackwater Worldwide, as it is the largest private military company in the world currently. They have been awarded more that $1.6 billion worth of federal contracts in the past, along with some $600 million worth of classified contracts from the CIA since 2001. Since Prince's exit, the company has been sold to a group of investors in 2010 and has since the following year run under the name Academi the following year.
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Prince, who has been a notorious favorite of scandalous headlines, had also published a book in 2013, titled 'Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.' Throughout his early life as a young adult, Prince has dabbled in a multitude of things. He attended the United States Naval Academy for three semesters after high school, but left because he couldn't like the Naval Academy. He graduated with a BA in economics in 1992 from Hillsdale College, and had worked at the time as a cold-water diver for the local sheriff's department. He was also a volunteer firefighter and later worked as an emergency medical technician.
Prince left his first White House internship in 1990 for one with California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and two short years later, he became an officer in the US Navy. Eventually, a Navy SEAL, Prince was deployed to the Middle East, Haiti, and the Balkans with SEAL Team 8. He quit the Navy following his father's death in 1995 and ran Prince Machine Corporation before it was sold to Johnson Controls for $1.35 billion the following year.
Prince began financing Blackwater Worldwide after moving to Virginia in 1997 and soon elevated it to becoming State Department's largest private security company. The company came under scrutiny after Blackwater employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians when they opened fire at Baghdad's Nisour Square. In October 2014, three of the company's guards were also convicted of manslaughter, and five years later in 2019, another guard was convicted on murder charges. Although the US Department of State Security had awarded the company a contract worth $120 million as well as $100 million in CIA contracts, criticism kept flooding.
Prince's personal life has been through three marriages, with seven children in total. His donations in politics have been towards Republican politicians like Ron Paul, Mike Pence, Pat Buchanan, and Mitt Romney, with $250,000 going to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.