Among the 56 passengers and crew killed in the 2025 Boing 727 crash in Sudan’s Darfur region were a South Sudanese pilot, a Kenyan pilot and a Peruvian ground engineer.

Now, a new Reuters investigation raises distressing questions about the role of the companies and individuals that owned the Boeing fleet that was accused of fuelling the civil war in Sudan that has killed thousands and displaced some six million Sudanese.

The South Sudanese pilot and the engineer were both working for retired US army veteran Steven Shaulis-owned, United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Occidental Support Services at the time of their fatal flight.

This is according to copies of their contracts reviewed and records provided by a corporate intelligence firm.

The pilot’s contract shows he was paid about $200 a day to work as a first officer for Occidental, with potential bonuses of up to $1,000 for “challenging conditions and timely landings.” That’s high pay for South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries.

The contract was dated April 13, 2025, about three weeks before he was killed. It had a non-compete clause preventing him from doing similar work without Occidental approval.

While Shaulis’s company Occidental employed the South Sudanese pilot and ground engineer of the 737, it was not possible to determine who owned the jet when it was destroyed in Nyala. In the aviation industry, companies providing crews to planes often don’t own the aircraft itself.

A few weeks after the 737 was destroyed by Sudan’s military, another Shaulis company bought another Boeing. This one was a 727, built in 1980, bought from a US government contractor called Kalitta Charters II LLC and located in the Midwestern US state of Michigan.

It was the first of three Boeing 727s that companies and people linked to Shaulis would buy from Kalitta and relocate to Africa. We tracked the first plane purchased from Kalitta to Rapid Support Forces (RSF) supply hubs but did not find evidence the other two had flown the same routes.

That first 727, registration N726CK, was bought on May 29, 2025, by South African company Contractor Airways Proprietary Limited, according to US Federal Aviation Administration documents. Shaulis is listed as a director of the company in South Africa’s business registry, as is a long time business partner of his in Africa, Craig Munro, who is also CEO of Contractor Airways.

Kalitta’s attorney said that, before agreeing to sell the three 727s to Contractor Airways, Kalitta carried out extensive due diligence to ensure sanctions compliance. He said this included a “know your customer” form that identified Shaulis and Munro as the joint owners of Contractor and that no sanctions violations were flagged in relation to the individuals or the company.

The same day the contract was signed, May 29, the plane landed in N’Djamena, according to flight tracking data, satellite imagery and a February 2026 letter from Chad’s civil aviation authority that was shared by Kalitta’s attorney.

Reached for comment, Munro said Occidental Support Services provided financing for Contractor Airways’ aircraft acquisitions. He said that plane and another Kalitta 727 that flew to Chad this year had remained parked since their arrival, aside from some “flights to and from N’Djamena carrying medical equipment for a client, in the ordinary course of our business.”

Shaulis referred questions about the aircraft to Munro, saying they had been sold onward, without providing further details. Multiple messages and calls to an email address and phone number listed in Occidental’s business licence went unanswered.

For much of last year, the first Kalitta Boeing 727 plane sat parked inside the tightly secured military section of N’Djamena airport, satellite imagery shows. Between June and October 2025, it made at least seven trips to Kufrah Airport in Libya, according to satellite imagery and location data for a mobile device that travelled on that plane and another old Boeing that Reuters linked to Shaulis companies.

The mobile data was provided and analysed by Conflict Insights Group, a public-interest research organisation that monitors conflict in Sudan.

The remote airstrip in south-eastern Libya, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) from Sudan’s border, proved critical during the RSF’s siege of al-Fashir, Reuters has reported. Kufrah, a vast desert region, is controlled by a Libyan military commander allied with the United Arab Emirates – the Gulf nation accused by US lawmakers and UN experts of sponsoring the RSF.

Authorities at Kufrah Airport declined to comment.

The former Kalitta Boeing 727 lands at the RSF-controlled Nyala airport in South Darfur, Sudan, in this undated video. The video, published by Colombian outlet La Silla Vacía’s journalist Santiago Rodriguez, was received on July 13, 2025, and verified by Reuters to have been filmed sometime after June 10, 2025.

The same jet also flew at least once to Nyala, according to an undated video published on August 3, 2025, by Colombian news outlet La Silla Vacia as part of a story on Colombian mercenaries operating in Sudan.

The video shows a Boeing 727 with the same white body and grey tail landing at Nyala airport. Reuters verified the video and confirmed it was shot in Nyala sometime after June 10, 2025.

Munro said claims that the planes had landed in Kufrah and Nyala were “to the best of our knowledge, false”.

“There is not, and has never been, any connection between Contractor Airways and the RSF,” he said.

Another Boeing 727 that ended up in the military section of N’Djamena airport came from Brazil, and would also end up making runs to Kufrah.

The plane’s seller – Total Linhas Aereas, a small cargo and charter airline – said it sold the plane for about $1 million to a US aviation broker named Michael Ferreira, who in turn sold it to Occidental. Reached for comment, Ferreira said he was “not aware” of the plane and declined further comment.

The plane’s new operator was listed in Brazilian registration documents as “Occidental Supporting Services,” an apparent misspelling of the Shaulis company name. A company spelled the same way was cited as the plane’s operator in October 2024 by Brazilian aviation media reporting the sale of the antiquated Boeing 727, registration PR-TTW, and noting it was destined for Chad.

Such sales get trade press attention because 727s are rare and beloved by aviation enthusiasts.

Total Linhas Aereas said it flew the plane to Natal in northeaster Brazil, a common departure point for transatlantic cargo flights to Africa, where flight tracking data shows it arrived on October 30, 2024.

Location data for the mobile device Reuters had tracked on the first Kalitta plane show that the same device flew from Natal to N’Djamena, arriving by November 1.

For much of last year, satellite imagery shows, the 727 from Brazil and the first plane sold by Kalitta sat side-by-side in the military section of N’Djamena airport.

The plane from Brazil underwent significant maintenance in Chad. Satellite imagery from December 2024 shows its right-side engine missing, then replaced by an engine painted a darker colour, one distinctive feature making it easy to identify in satellite images.

Those images show the plane made at least three trips to Kufrah in Libya – on March 25, September 18 and on January 4, 2026.

The flights in 2025 coincided with a surge in cargo flights from the UAE and Somalia to Kufrah documented by a UN panel of experts in the run-up to the RSF’s capture of al-Fashir.

Between July 9 and July 12 this year, all three Boeing planes were moved out of the military section at N’Djamena airport and parked elsewhere, satellite imagery shows.

• A Reuters report