With the second season of The Night Manager wrapping up recently, those viewing Johnathan Pine’s (Tom Hiddleston) latest mission were treated to a glamorous adventure in Colombia, with a massive shipment of British weapons set to enrich a nasty but fashionable arms dealer.

The same week the finale aired, the British government was responding to the UK’s own, real life, connection to Colombian war profiteers. Though lacking the glitz of the Night Manager, the connections of one UK-registered company are more shocking than anything aired in the BBC drama.

Since 8 April 2025, a company named Zeuz Global Ltd has been registered to a London address: first to a drab apartment building in Tottenham, and later moving to more upmarket locations at the Waldorf Hilton and One Aldwych hotels in central London.

Far more interesting than these addresses is the individual appointed to the company in July 2025, Mateo Adres Duque Botero. On 9 December 2025, the US OFAC identified Botero as an important link in a network used to pay Colombian mercenaries, primarily those fighting in Sudan. Soon after this OFAC designation, The Guardian reported what had been public information on Companies House for months: Botero was the appointed director of Zeuz Global, a UK company.

Despite its imposing name, Zeuz Global itself would not be a company worthy of a spythriller. Its presence in London has nothing to do with gun‑running or mercenaries, but simply serves as a convenient UK postcode for facilitating payments and moving money. A legal foothold in the UK provides four things: the credibility of a “London‑based company” for payments, financial access, and a veneer of international legitimacy, all at a low and accessible cost. As a UK‑based entity, Zeuz Global is able to make cross‑border payments and carry out contract and recruitment work far from any actual criminal operations.

Despite Zeuz Global initially ringing no alarm bells in the UK, the December 2025 OFAC listing revealed that it was just one in an array of global entities facilitating highly illegal operations. Also placed under sanctions was a Colombian company, International Services Agency (A4SI) SAS, a central corporate vehicle used to recruit and deploy Colombian ex‑military personnel to Sudan. Unlike Zeuz Global, A4SI was presented as the operational contracting entity: the company through which Colombians were hired, processed and routed onward to the conflict zone.

Colombian mercenaries who make it to Sudan are contracted to serve the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia formerly loyal to the government that has been engaged in outright war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since 2023. Though sources estimate that the total number of Colombians in the conflict remains low, with 300 being an often‑cited figure, they have been filmed multiple times playing a key role in the fighting. This has included footage of them training new RSF recruits and participating in the siege of, and subsequent massacre in, the city of ElFasher in the east of the country. On 19 February, a UN fact‑finding mission reported that actions at El Fasher bore, “the hallmarks of genocide.”

‍

‍

Why Colombians?

Colombians have been identified in conflict zones across the world. Perhaps the most consequential of these appearances was the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse by Colombian mercenaries in 2021, a killing considered a major turning point in the country’s slide into chaos. The current prevalence of Colombians in global conflicts can be traced back to Colombia’s decades‑long civil war. Complicated andmulti‑faceted,it was, to oversimplify, a conflict between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a communist group committed to revolution through armed struggle. Brutal tactics were used on both sides, and FARC became notorious for its recruitment of child soldiers.

‍

‍

In 2016, a peace deal was signed, and many men trained for war were left struggling for work. Though the conflict still persists in the form of clashes with FARC dissidents and drug cartels, this is greatly reduced from its height in previous decades, with many troops no longer employed after demobilisation. Veterans of the Colombian conflict were often not just simple conscripts, but fighters with deep experience in counter‑insurgency, including training from the US Army in its support of Colombia’s government. This experience makes them attractive contractors in places such as Sudan, where the often asymmetrical nature of the conflict makes their tenure in the Colombian war a valuable commodity.

‍

Mercenary Abroad- Political at Home

Though hired guns appear to have no ideological allegiance, fighting for Ukraine, Russia and any side with money, the social media of key figure Omar Antonio Rodríguez Bedoya may suggest a prominent worldview among Colombian‑origin mercenaries.

According to the A4SI 's incorporation records at the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, thecompany was founded in 2017 by Omar Antonio Rodríguez Bedoya, a retired Army Officer.

‍

‍

Themis identified a photo of Omar with former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. As the dominant political figure in Colombia throughout the 2000s, Uribe became the namesake of his own political movement: Uribismo. Uribismo, a right‑wing populist ideology based on Uribe’s hardline leadership, is popular among many former members of the military. Key features include a belief in a military solution to Colombia’s conflicts and strong opposition to the peace deals brokered with FARC since 2016. Uribe‑aligned candidates were also often accused of receiving support from paramilitaries in the 2000s, dubbed Parapolítica by the Colombian press.

‍

‍

Omar is not the only figure within the Colombia‑to‑Sudan pipeline with identifiable links to Uribismo. A man matching the full name of the individual identified as the director of the London‑based Zeuz Global, Mateo Andrés Duque Botero, was also identified as standing for the Partido Cambio Radical (Radical Change Party), winning a seat on the BogotáCity Council from 2016 to 2019. Despite its name of “Radical Change”, the party itself is relatively moderate, defined as centre or centre‑right. However, its defining moment was as part of the winning coalition that established the Álvaro Uribe government in 2002. Though the party lacks a radical identity of its own, it was a key component of the Uribismo government.

Thought here is nothing to indicate a deep‑level,decades‑long,secret conspiracy between mercenaries and Uribe, like the relationship between the Night Manager’s villain Teddy Dos Santos and the military in the show, there is a clear political tinge to those involved in PMC operations. This is common among mercenary groups, which are often made up of ex‑soldiers trained for a war that has now ended, or deployed to serve a country’s interests while keeping their home government’s hands clean (such as the Wagner PMC serving Russian interests in Africa). In this case, the political and ex‑military leanings of those involved in Zeuz and A4SI make them very likely supporters of the Uribismo outlook: that the Colombian war should have ended in a complete military victory over FARC,and opposition to the 2016 peace deal.

‍

It’s a long way to Darfur

Thought here is not the same level of long‑term plotting seen in The Night Manager, the continuous search by soldiers of fortune for the next payout does lead them into the sort of globe trotting misadventures worthy of a high‑budget six‑part miniseries (or seven series if adapted by an American studio).

‍

‍

The investigative journalist group Bellingcat analysed footage of Sudanese soldiers inspecting the passport of a dead Colombian after ambushing their convoy. The men in the video flip through the pages, revealing passport stamps for transit through France, the United Arab Emirates and Libya. Using footage posted by one of the Colombians, they identified a rock formation located in south‑eastern Libya, confirming that the mercenaries drove through the Sahara to enter Sudan via its northern border.

Just days ago, the Egyptian Air Force confirmed that it has started conducting airstrikes on resupply and weapons shipments along the same route in north‑west Sudan. While this may make there supply of the RSF and the entry of mercenaries into the country more difficult, videos from this month continue to show the presence of Colombians in Sudan.

Better late than never: The very recent Government Response

With the listing of Botero as a sanctioned individual by the US OFAC in December,and the revelation by The Guardian that he and his colleagues were using UK addresses for their business shortly thereafter, it was not until 5 February 2026 that the UK applied sanctions to Colombians involved in the mercenary business.

Though the UK has previously taken action against entities involved in Sudan’s civil war—freezing the assets of businesses used to support both sides of the conflict in April 2024, and specifically sanctioning four RSF commanders in December 2025 in response to the violence at El Fasher—the existence of Zeuz Global does raise questions about anti‑money‑laundering (AML) and due‑diligence measures. While there are understandable limits on what a government can monitor for (Zeuz director Botero was not sanctioned when the company was formed in April), it highlights the ever‑present need to pursue both more comprehensive regulation on the formation of British companies, and better techniques, through both expertise and technology, in the due diligence conducted by Companies House.

Though not as exciting or glamorous as the sun‑drenched adventures of Jonathan Pine through Medellín, the continuous striving for better AML and DD controls in jurisdictions such as the UK is just as high‑stakes. Though more likely to take place in a dull office than an Andean villa, such measures can play a crucial role in cutting off the money going to actions in Sudan more shocking and real than anything a TV thriller could air.

‍