The Sentry

The Sentry is an investigative and policy team that follows the dirty money connected to African war criminals and transnational war profiteers and seeks to shut those benefiting from violence out of the international financial system. By disrupting the cost-benefit calculations of those who hijack governments for self-enrichment, we seek to counter the main drivers of conflict and create new leverage for peace, human rights, and good governance. The Sentry is composed of financial investigators, international human rights lawyers, and regional experts, as well as former law enforcement agents, intelligence officers, policymakers, investigative journalists, and banking professionals. Co-founded by George Clooney and John Prendergast, The Sentry is a strategic partner of the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

Within East and Central Africa, which loses billions of dollars a year in illicit financial outflows, mainly from its extraordinary natural resource wealth, The Sentry focuses primarily on the conflict zone spanning Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. We aim to create significant financial consequences for kleptocrats, war criminals, and their international financial facilitators through network sanctions, anti-money laundering measures, prosecutions, compliance actions by banks and other private companies, asset recovery, and other tools of economic and legal pressure. The Sentry engages intensively with policymakers, law enforcement officials, global banks, tech and mining companies, and other private sector entities around the world. We also support activist campaigns involving students, faith-based groups, celebrities, human rights organizations, and other concerned constituencies.