Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenaries are notably exploiting the Ndassima mine in the Central African Republic, where they melt gold bars that are then discreetly shipped to Russia.

Thanks to contacts in Cameroon, the port of Douala has become the hub of their commercial operations. They hope to expand their activities there.

It’s one of the few passable secondary roads in the Ouaka region of central CAR. A new strip of tarmac stretches for about 10km through the bush, from the town of Ndassima to the gold mine of the same name.

Closely monitored

It looks like a dark, bloody cut through an ocean of greenery and ochre. The parade of trucks is regular and very closely monitored.

Along the route, several checkpoints have been set up, manned by men from the Forces armées de la République centrafricaine – FACA – CAR’s armed forces. Each driver is questioned and every vehicle is carefully searched.

In recent years, the Ndassima mine site has been fenced off. It winds its way almost hermetically through the Central African forest, a vegetal barrier that itself contributes to making the site almost impenetrable.

Its construction was carried out by local workers, under the supervision of Russian engineers from the now-infamous Wagner Group. In 2018, the group set its sights on Ndassima, which is anything but a surprise. For many years, this coveted gold mine has been cited by international mining experts as one of the country’s only potentially profitable deposits.

A Wagner-Darassa deal dating back to 2018

The Canadians from the Axmin company had long been at loggerheads with local armed groups. In 2012, the mine came under the control of the Séléka [the rebel coalition], who exploited it artisanally with the permission of Unité pour la paix en Centrafrique (UPC) and its leader Ali Darassa.

Using Central African miners doped up on tramadol and its cheaper imitations, the site was seeing a painfully slow extraction of about 15kg of gold per month. A trifle for Ndassima. However, UPC alone controlled the activity for about six years, pushing aside Axmin, which now claims to have invested nearly €800m in the mine. Then Wagner’s men arrived.

It was 2018. The Russian mercenary group was not yet established in Bangui. The government denied its presence, French diplomats minimised its importance and its men, led by Valery Zakharov and Dmitri Sytyi, were discreet.

Propaganda operations

Zakharov, however, was the unofficial security advisor to head of state Faustin-Archange Touadéra. Sytyi, specialised in communication and management and was fluent in French, was the translator and referent for propaganda operations and economic ambitions.

In the capital, the pair would welcome several Russian engineers charged with studying the Central African subsoil and determining its remunerative potential. A first step.

During the second quarter of 2018, several of them, including geologist Sergei Laktionov, travelling on a Cessna plane, were reported in the central-eastern part of the country, particularly in the regions of Kaga-Bandoro and Bambari, where the UPC’s hold was strong.

The brains behind Wagner set up a mining company in Bangui called Lobaye Invest, named after Evgueni Kodhotov – one of the lieutenants of Wagner’s business financier Evgueni Prigojine – and maintained close links with a second, Midas Ressources, registered in Madagascar. These companies would allow them to perform mining operations to support the group’s security activities.

Ndassima soon emerged as a golden opportunity. Discreetly, Wagner entered into negotiations with Darassa. In 2018, he was in a good mood, open to an agreement with Touadéra, which would allow him to obtain an official position in the Bambari region, which he considered his stronghold.

Wagner played the role of facilitator between the rebel and the president, and Ndassima entered the equation. Darassa agreed to let the Russians develop the mine in return for regular payments for himself and his troops, who in turn would provide security and manpower. In return, the rebel set the UPC on the path to the Khartoum peace agreements, which would be signed in February 2019.

A logistics plant in Douala

Darassa was appointed special advisor to Prime Minister Firmin Ngrebadapar in a March 2019 decree issued by Touadéra. Meanwhile, the Russian exploitation of Ndassima was slowly being set up. A few months later, in November, Axmin was officially stripped of its rights to the site by the mines ministry, which was shortly afterwards reallocated to Midas Ressources.

The Canadians cried foul, to no avail. The Russians from Wagner started building the fence that would protect the site from possible attacks by armed groups. Then, in the course of 2020, they ordered the machines that would allow them to dig and extract the precious ore on a large scale.

The machines were unloaded at the port of Douala, where they were received by a company called International Global Logistics (IGL), managed by Central African Anour Madjido. This former student of the University Institute of the Gulf of Guinea (IUG) located in Cameroon’s economic capital worked for the company CAT Cameroon before setting up his own transport company.

Little by little, he developed his network from Douala to Bangui, taking advantage of CAR’s isolation to grow his business. He was then contacted by one of Wagner’s managers in CAR, an engineer named Nikolaï, who had previously worked in the coffee and cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire.

This was the beginning of what is today a strong Russian-Central African partnership. Since its exploration in 2018, the Russian group has decided to make the gold mine one of its main sources of income in CAR.

From Douala, Madjido and Nikolaï had mechanical shovels, crushers and other excavation cranes imported for the Wagner group, which were essential to gold activities at the Ndassima mine. Thanks to the fence it built, Wagner was now able to closely control access, with FACA collaboration or thanks to its own mercenaries, who were posted at the final checkpoint marking the true entrance to the site. A matter of discretion.

Gold ingots behind the fence

Most of the employees recruited in the nearby region and in Bambari sleep inside the compound, in barracks hidden from view, not far from the 40 or so Russian civil engineers currently working there.

The number of the latter – whose security on trips from Bangui to Ndassima is assured by the Central African army – increased significantly in 2021 as the mine’s activity developed. Non-residents, including the drivers of the eight-cubic-metre dump trucks responsible for moving the minerals, are systematically searched on entry and their phones confiscated to prevent photography at the site.

From Bambari to Bangui, the dump trucks are rented for around 300,000 CFA francs ($495) a day to transport the gold-bearing gravel to the washing machines. As for the drivers, they are paid by the transporter and fed on-site in Ndassima, where the initial processing of the precious ore takes place.

The ore is then gradually cleaned and purified until it can be smelted into ingots of sufficient quality and gold content. Here again, the equipment needed for the smelter built and inaugurated on the Ndassima site was purchased in Douala and then transported from Cameroon by Anouar Madjido and his Russian partner Nikolaï’s company IGL.

No controls, no taxes

Dozens of bottles of argon gas and large quantities of lime are used to ensure the local melting and transformation of the gold into ingots. The latter, loaded onto trucks, then discreetly leaves the compound and is transported to Bangui in secure convoys.

According to our sources, Wagner had at one time considered the possibility of exporting its shipments through Sudan and had even discussed this idea with the warlord Noureddine Adam, who is very present on the Sudanese border. But this solution was later abandoned as too complicated and risky.

According to one of Wagner’s business partners, ingots destined for Russia are now leaving the country via Mpoko airport in Bangui, without any controls or payment of taxes, and via an entrance reserved for Russians next to the presidential pavilion.

The “mercenary entrepreneurs” are also said to take advantage of the same comfortable exit route to export smaller quantities of ingots from another foundry. Located in Bangui, this smelter processes gold-bearing gravel from the smaller mines of the Lobaye Invest company in the vicinity of the towns of Zawa, Boda and Bangandou.

Billions in potential revenue?

How much revenue is Wagner generating in the Central African gold sector today? At least since early 2021, the Russians have broken free from their financial agreement with Darassa’s UPC.

They, therefore, have control over the site and all of Ndassima’s resources – much to the chagrin of Axmin, which continues to contest the withdrawal of its rights before the Cour Internationale d’Arbitrage at the International Chamber of Commerce (CCI) in Paris. Wagner, however, has not released any information about the complex’s profitability and is even suspected of having ordered the July 2018 assassination of Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguev and Kirill Radchenko, three Russian journalists who came to Central Africa to investigate Wagner’s mining interests.

The Central African government has completely lost control of what Wagner and Midas Ressources are doing in Ndassima.

The mine’s potential, however, is estimated by experts at €2.5bn ($2.7bn) and more than 50 tonnes of gold. “This is still very difficult to determine,” says one expert. “On which market can the Russians sell this gold? What is the purity percentage of their ingots? This has a huge impact on potential profitability”.

According to our source in Bangui, at least one plane chartered by Wagner leaves CAR every week, often on Tuesday morning. The Central African Ministry of Mines has refused to share any information on the subject. And for good reason, says our interlocutor: “They have completely lost control of what Wagner and Midas Ressources are doing in Ndassima”.

Especially since the Russian mercenary group’s activity list doesn’t end with gold mines. A non-negligible part of its Central African revenue now comes from the country’s forests and the timber exploited by another company linked to Lobaye Invest, known as Bois Rouge, as revealed in a Mediapart investigation published in July 2022.

Managed since early 2019 by Central African Anastasie Nannette Yakoima, this company is in fact controlled by a Russian, Artem Tolmachev, who holds the position of “sales manager” and occasionally represents it at various international forestry conferences, such as Shanghai’s in 2019.

Up to three convoys a week from Bangui to Douala

The forestry business also functions thanks to a well-oiled organisation in which the route from Bangui to Douala, the real artery of the Central African economy, plays a predominant role. Once again, IGL, the transport company based in Cameroon, is at the helm. And it is through this company that a large part of the drivers transporting the logs cut by Bois Rouge in CAR is recruited.

Madjido – using Wagner funds that are made available in cash in Bangui via a Russian known as Roman – is in charge of logistics on the ground.

Madjido pays the drivers according to the journey, such as around 1.5m CFA francs for a load of wood brought from the Boda region in Lobaye to the capital, for a round trip of approximately 400km. Although payments are handed over directly in cash without a written contract, each driver is given a loading slip stamped “Bois Rouge” and signed by the company’s general manager, Yakoima.

In Bangui, the logs are stored on a piece of land made available to Wagner while waiting to be transported to the port of Douala by road in convoys supervised by IGL and secured by Russian mercenaries. Approximately two to three weekly departures are organised to Cameroon’s economic capital.

Each convoy consists of about 150 to 200 trucks, of which about 60 are for Wagner’s activities alone. These are guarded by several security vehicles at the front and rear, with another armoured vehicle regularly patrolling the column to discourage attacks. The Russians, however, have stopped using a helicopter to fly over the convoy after losing two aircraft in recent years.

Making millions on the road

Although securing the route has a definite cost, organising these convoys is no less profitable, if one considers that many Central African transporters pay to be part of them.

According to witnesses who have taken the plunge, the price for benefiting from the security of a Wagner convoy amounts to 50,000 CFA francs per vehicle. A source in Bangui told us this represents a windfall estimated at more than 20m CFA francs per week, with 100 to 150 “non-Wagner” trucks per column.

“Wagner’s convoys have the advantage of being faster than those organised by the UN, which are half as expensive but twice as slow. The Russians often take only two days to make the journey,” says one source.

In addition, Wagner has received several incentives from the Central African authorities to develop its income from CAR’s roads. According to several witnesses, Bangui traders are encouraged to use its services by the Groupement des transporteurs centrafricains (GTC), an organisation chaired by a very influential man: Sani Yalo, Ministerial Advisor to President Touadéra and head of BARC, the group that controls the GTC.

“Through BARC and the GTC, Sani Yalo has a stranglehold on the transport sector and he is making the president’s Russian allies the beneficiary,” says a government source.

Wagner’s convoys can also count on facilitation at the CAR-Cameroon border. They are not stopped by the Central African authorities at the border town of Garoua Boulaï along the Bangui-Douala route. Bangui customs also provides release papers for imported goods travelling in the opposite direction. This is a highly organised system said to have been developed in part by a former Russian customs director deployed to CAR in 2021, Yuri Liamchkine.

“Thanks to this, the Russians do not pay any tax to enter or leave the territory,” says a source close to the group of transporters. The Central African government has remained mum on the issue.

The diversification of a multinational

When we contacted Cameroonian authorities about Wagner’s use of their territory, they denied it. “Their goods only pass through our territory and they have the proper authorisations from CAR. So we don’t interfere,” replied a security source in Yaoundé.

The actions of the Russian mercenaries are nevertheless closely monitored by Cameroonian intelligence services, who observe in particular the port outlets in Douala. This is all the more important given that another Wagner activity is expected to start up in Cameroon’s economic capital in 2023.

According to our sources, Wagner is preparing to launch a Central African coffee roasting plant in a north-western Bangui industrial zone. For several months now, Roman – in association with his compatriot Nikolaï, who has already worked in this sector in Côte d’Ivoire – has been in contact with CAR coffee growers, particularly in the Lobaye and Mambéré-Kadéï regions (west of Bangui).

He’s been seeking out robusta and arabica beans there, which would be stored in Berberati, and then transported to Douala by Wagner and IGL convoys, before being processed and shipped to Russia.

According to our latest research, this coffee activity has not yet started, since the Douala roasting plant is still waiting for raw materials. Its potential profitability is therefore still difficult to estimate, as CAR coffee production is very uncertain, fluctuating between 1,000 and 10,000 tonnes per year.

“Wagner acts like a multinational in the Central African Republic. The group is diversifying as much as possible to multiply its sources of income and secure its profitability,” says an expert on the group. Roman is also interested in another product, sugar, as Wagner is looking to take over some of the activities of the Somdiaa group, whose presence in CAR is threatened by the security situation.

Sugar and local fighters

“Wagner’s idea is to do with sugar and Somdiaa what they did with gold in Ndassima and Axmin. But this activity has yet to be secured,” says our expert.

The Russian mercenary group benefits from contacts within the ranks of some small armed groups from Darassa’s UPC. It relies in particular on the networks of the UPC’s former number two, Hassan Bouba, linked to the Touadéra government since the peace agreements of 2019 and who is none other than CAR’s current livestock minister.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Wagner has been forced to reduce its number of combatants in CAR, while its civilian staff, mostly engineers and salespeople, has gradually increased.

“They are trying to recruit Central African auxiliaries from the ranks of former UPC members to secure some of their commercial activities, especially in sugar,” says one of our sources in Bangui.

According to this source, Minister Bouba is directly involved in these operations, as are two of his lieutenants, Idriss Maloum and Hamadou Tanga. The latter also regularly accompany Vitali Perfilev, Wagner’s head of military operations, on his travels outside Bangui, particularly in the regions to the northeast of the capital, the UPC’s main area of influence.

The alliance between Wagner and Bouba’s former security forces is said to have allowed the group to recruit several hundred local fighters at low cost to protect its activities outside Bangui. This is nothing new for the livestock minister, who was at Darassa’s side in 2018 during the agreement with Wagner over Ndassima.

Will the new arrangement be enough to allow Prigozhin’s men to ensure sugar production in an area where groups loyal to Darassa are still active? Experts estimate that CAR could produce some 12,000 tonnes of blond sugar per year. This is a significant volume and a significant windfall.

Whisky and tonnes of malt

Gold, wood, coffee, sugar… The list of products from companies linked to Wagner continues to grow. In Bangui, Roman organises the activities of the different branches from his office in the heart of the capital, in the Sica II district.

This man measuring about 5’7”, who often wears his brown hair in a bun, is in charge of keeping essential cash flowing between the Roux camp – the former French base where Vitali Perfilev and Dmitri Sytyi, the group’s bosses in CAR, work – and Cameroon.

Through a clandestine transfer network in Bangui, the money is withdrawn from Douala’s Congo district by Madjido, who puts it at the disposal of his Russian supervisor Nikolaï.

Under the direction of Sytyi – recently the victim of a parcel bomb attack in Bangui – and Perfilev, Roman also oversees the activities of Wagner’s “Brasserie”, located in Bangui.

The land, ceded by the Central African state, is now used to store goods headed to and from Douala. But it also houses yet another tentacle of Wagner’s entrepreneurial octopus: the First Industrial Company (FIC). Registered in Sytyi’s name and employing two Russian engineers and about 20 Central Africans, it has started producing beer and other alcohol.

FIC offers a variety of low-priced whiskies made from the hydroalcoholic gel (7,500 CFA francs per bottle and 200 CFA francs per bag), concocted in cheap blue barrels bought in Nigeria and transported to Bangui via Cameroon by IGL.

According to our research, in order to produce these dubious – and dangerous – elixirs, the company had some 40 tonnes of barley malt delivered in April 2022 – once again via the port of Douala – for a little more than $30,000, as well as a filtration system costing $188,000. The company hopes to make a return on its investment thanks to Central African consumers.