On the night of March 5 to 6 in Bangui, surveillance cameras filmed four masked men in outfits similar to those of the Russian mercenaries of the Wagner Group, throwing Molotov cocktails at the Mocaf brasserie, of the French alcohol giant Castel. And this three months after a parcel bomb injured in the capital the Russian “cultural adviser” Dmitri Syty, “one of the pillars of the Wagner system in the Central African Republic”, according to the international investigative collective All Eyes on Wagner. Attack of which the head of this private security company, Evguéni Prigojine, very close to Vladimir Putin, accuses France. Who denies and speaks of “propaganda”.
The Franco-Russian war of influence in the Central African Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world in civil war for almost ten years, was until then limited to massive trolls on social networks. She is moving on dangerous ground. Especially since Bangui, with the most execrable relations with the former colonial power, multiplies the gestures of appeasement, including a meeting in early March between the two presidents, Emmanuel Macron and Faustin-Touadéra. “The Russians are worried about a possible rapprochement between Touadera and Westerners and are going as far as possible to prevent a reconciliation”, analyzes for AFP Roland Marchal, researcher at Sciences Po Paris and specialist in Africa.
The campaigns of reciprocal accusations between Paris and Moscow in the Central African Republic have been raging since 2018, to such an extent that Facebook in December 2020 removed troll factories and other “infox” supports administered by the Prigojine galaxy; but also, according to her, certain accounts linked to the French army, whose last soldiers left the country on December 15 after sixty-two years of presence since independence.
The ideal target
The video of the attack on the brewery, viral on social networks and authenticated by Mocaf for AFP, is a new vector of this war of influence. Castel is an ideal target, since she is the subject of a preliminary investigation by French anti-terrorism justice for “complicity in war crimes”, via an alleged “financial arrangement” with rebels for the security of the installations of a another subsidiary, Sucaf. Since January, Mocaf, inaugurated in 1953 and one of the largest employers in the country, has been the target of smear campaigns and threats, in the streets and on the Internet. “Castel is death”, “If you buy Castel, you pay for your murder”, read the signs of about twenty demonstrators in front of the brewery in mid-January. “Castel = Terrorist,” placards elsewhere proclaimed.
“The fire was the high point, but there was an attempted intrusion before,” an anonymous executive from Castel in France told AFP: “On January 30, during the curfew, three white men exit an unmarked vehicle and approach with a ladder before being chased away by security. The same evening, a drone flies over the brewery. The arson, “it was a sponsored action, a lightning attack”, “five minutes in total”, observes Ben Wilson Ngassan, communication consultant for Mocaf, who counted the jet “about thirty cocktails Molotov”. The fatigues, the Kalashnikov in the back, the attitudes, the silhouettes and “quite athletic builds”… Even if their faces do not appear, a European source close to the file has made a religion with the video: they are Wagners .
But the next day, social networks and pro-Russian media spoke of Central Africans or “mercenaries” disguised to blame Wagner. And “paid” by France. The Ndjoni Sango news site, which regularly praises the Russian presence, even announces, with supporting photos of the “suspects”, the arrest of seven “presumed perpetrators”, on a “commanded mission […] in order to stick the responsibility to a scapegoat”. “Fulani”, adds the site, in reference to the majority ethnic group in the rebel group incriminated in the investigation on Sucaf… “False information”, immediately commented for AFP an official of the Central African security services.
Bullying
Then on March 9, police rounded up eight foreigners, including four Frenchmen, at the Relais des Chasses, a famous French hotel-restaurant in Bangui, “as part of the investigation into the Mocaf fire”. In search, according to them, of an incendiary liquid used for Molotov cocktails. They will all be released a few hours later, without questioning.
A new way to intimidate Western economic operators, loose a diplomat, who fears an escalation. Especially since the investigation into the fire has still yielded nothing. “We use all the documents before making arrests,” Bangui prosecutor Benoît Narcisse Foukpio told AFP on Tuesday, March 14, eight days after the fire.
The UN, the European Union, NGOs and Western capitals, primarily Paris, regularly accuse the Wagners – but also the rebels – of crimes against civilians. And France accuses Mr. Touadéra of having, in exchange for their military support against the rebellion, bartered the wealth of his country, gold and diamonds in particular, to a whole galaxy of companies linked, according to the UN and Paris, to Wagner.
Gold, diamonds, wood… but not only. Beer war too. In early January, coinciding with the anti-Castel campaign, a new beer, Africa Ti L’Or, flooded bars in the capital. These bottles are marketed by the First Industrial Company, which is headed by Dmitri Syty, according to an investigation by the weekly Jeune Afrique. And it is not uncommon to see Russian paramilitaries delivering crates of them to town… “The Russians are trying to oust all foreign companies from the Central African Republic,” accuses the European source.
