The U.N. report reviewed by Reuters was compiled by the Panel of Experts on the Sudan, a group mandated by the Security Council to monitor an arms embargo imposed on Darfur in 2004. The draft report has been submitted to the Security Council for review ahead of publication.
Sudan's civil war started in 2023 when leaders of the army and the RSF fell out over plans to integrate their forces during a failed transition to civilian government. The death toll since is estimated in the hundreds of thousands and the fighting has worsened famine and disease, creating what the U.N. calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The planes identified by the U.N. were among the ones Reuters linked to RSF hubs.
The U.N. report said three 727s – one sold in Brazil to a Shaulis-linked company and two acquired from Michigan-based Kalitta Charters II – appeared in Chad from November 2024 and operated out of the military apron of N'Djamena's airport.
Kalitta's attorney told Reuters the company had carried out extensive due diligence before the planes were sold and no sanctions violations were flagged.
The U.N. panel said no movement by any of the three planes had been logged since they arrived in N'Djamena, adding that it suspected the Boeings were taking "deliberate steps to avoid detection while in flight", without providing further details.
The report said that between January and July 2026, multiple Boeing 727s and some Ilyushin II-76 transport planes landed in Nyala at night.
Reuters tracked the movement of the Boeings from N'Djamena to RSF hubs in Libya and Sudan using satellite imagery, cell phone data and an open source video, but also found no record of the flights on independent trackers that monitor the signals aircraft normally broadcast while in the air.
"The RSF utilized the N'Djamena-Nyala air corridor to transport fighters, foreign mercenaries, and military equipment, including drones and weapons, into Darfur," the U.N. report stated.
Shaulis and business partner Craig Munro are joint owners of Contractor Airways, the South African company that bought two of the 727s from Kalitta, according to records reviewed by Reuters.
Munro told Reuters previously that Contractor Airways had never had any connection to the RSF. Reuters findings that the aircraft had landed in Nyala and Kufrah in Libya, he said, were "to the best of our knowledge, false".
Chad's Civil Aviation Authority said none of the Boeings had authorisation to operate from Chad, emphasizing that it did not manage military aviation nor provide services responsible for tracking flight movements.
Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul has said questions about the planes were subject to defense secrecy, adding that Chad's only involvement in Sudan's war was through "diplomatic efforts to restore peace".
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