For thirty years he has frequented war zones, from Iraq (Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi) to Afghanistan (Kabul), passing by the tricky Gulf of Guinea where the worst pirates on the planet are rampant. Richard Terzan manages Risk & Co (bought by the Anticip Group), a security and defense services company (ESSD) with around 100 employees which generated nearly 10 million euros in turnover in 2019. His assignment ? Support and protect companies and their employees in sensitive areas. And this, all over the world. “We have built a very operational structure. And over the past few years, we have seen the world of security evolve with a little less action in the field but more engineering. We write security reference systems and work more and more more on cyber defense, including for the Ministry of the Armed Forces”, explains Richard Terzan.
His clients ? Key accounts of the CAC 40 (Total, EDF, Thalès…), groups in the Aeronautics and Defense sector such as Ariane Group, Nexter (tank), MBDA (missiles), but also banks such as Crédit Agricole, the insurer Covea or the Sanofi laboratory. Companies, some of which have called on its services since February when the situation was becoming increasingly worrying in Ukraine. For reasons of confidentiality, Richard Terzan did not wish to detail for whom he had worked in recent weeks. But he admits having exfiltrated from the conflict “about 300 people”.
Several tens of thousands of euros per mission
“We have this long-term advisory function, we support companies on their business trips, but there, with Ukraine, we had to write exit plans from the country almost overnight and adapt them. almost every day, says Richard Terzan who was marked by two things in this war: First, we all thought that the Russian maneuvers would be limited to the Donbass, but the scale of the invasion was finally massive. , is that the war against terrorism had shown us the use of surgical strikes; this is not the case in this war, we find images that we thought belong to the past. Images of Mariupol recall the bombing of Dresden (February 1945, editor’s note)…”
Illustrative photo showing a 4×4 convoy during an operation in Iraq
DR
In his company, Richard Terzan set up a crisis unit, active 24 hours a day, from February 24. He had anticipated that the greatest risk would be precisely at the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics (4-20 February 2022). There was no question for him of sending teams from France to the field, all the operations were carried out with men on the spot, made up mainly of Ukrainians but also a few Russians, very often former soldiers of the Soviet era. “The classic scheme consists of setting rendezvous points and preparing the evacuation by tracing routes, planning refueling points. But the conditions deteriorated very quickly, which meant that we had to adapt the evacuation plans. ‘evacuation under conditions that changed every hour,’ recalls the CEO, who charges several tens of thousands of euros for his services per mission.
“Some are on stand-by. Others have gone to fight…”
Moreover, along the way, we also had to lend a hand to certain people who were not included in the operations. “One morning, we inform our guys that a woman and her baby have taken refuge in a cellar. They took the initiative to go and get them. It was the decision of the head of mission. received a photo: they had arrived in Poland”, says Richard Terzan who salutes the heroism of his agents, the latter having operated in very difficult conditions.
As the war in Ukraine passed the 40-day mark, that the Russians change their strategy to concentrate their forces in the east of the country, Richard Terzan recognizes that his activity has dropped considerably. “The peak of activity really took place in the first 15 days of the offensive. Since then, operations have slowed down. Developments on the ground are increasingly difficult. We remain in daily contact with our teams on site. Some are on stand-by. Others have gone to fight with their army,” says the CEO.
Far from the image of mercenaries who make up the sulphurous Wagner group, Richard Terzan recognizes that the presence of armed private agents in the field can convey many fantasies. However, if these operations are by nature discreet, they are not clandestine. Private security companies like his often collaborate with the Quai d’Orsay or the Ministry of the Armed Forces so as not to create interference on the ground. The military past of each other is no stranger to it.
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