An investigation reveals that the leader of the paramilitary group Wagner engaged in many African countries paid more than 400,000 dollars to the controversial activist Kémi Séba.
A survey led by the magazine Young Africa and with the collaboration of several other media reveals that the boss of the Russian militia Wagner would have financially helped the pan-Africanist militant Kémi Séba. Based on several documents directly from entities belonging to Evgueni Prigojine, this investigation shows that Kémi Séba would have received a total of 440,000 euros between May 2018 and July 2019 by several successive transfers.
In detail, the documents quoted refer on several occasions to a “chemistry project“. This operation by Prigojine would result in concrete help for the radical militant in the construction of a pan-African party and the development of its media resources.
The survey, also carried out with the magazine Sources of art/layer and the German daily The world, as well as with the organizations All Eyes On Wagner and Dossier Center, also shows that Kémi Séba traveled to Saint Petersburg in 2019, the birthplace of Prigojine. The controversial activist would then have benefited, for the sum of 10,000 euros, from a luxurious stay with a boat cruise on the Neva river, a traditional Russian sauna, a football match or even an evening in a posh restaurant. The activist refutes with Young Africa this information but he acknowledges having received assistance for plane tickets, not questioning this trip.
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Kémi Séba has never hidden his links with the head of Wagner. But he now claims not to speak to him for several years. The activist justifies this distance by the requests of Prigojine to carry out violent actions against Western symbols in Africa which he would have refused.
Political activism against France
This Franco-Beninese, leader of Pan-Africanist Emergencies, is also known for having led the Tribu Ka, a black supremacist group which in 2006 raided rue des Rosiers, a Jewish district of Paris, launching anti-Semitic threats and insults. A time close to Alain Soral and Dieudonné, he gradually abandoned the theme of race for a more unifying subject: Pan-Africanism. In his words, France has today replaced the white man as the origin of all the ills of Africans.
His political activism had also pushed him to campaign against the CFA franc, notably whispering in the ears of members of the Italian government at the start of 2019. The then Vice-President of the Italian Council, Luigi Di Maio, also leader of the M5S, had launched a violent charge against Paris, accused “to prevent the developmentof countries using the CFA franc, triggering a serious diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
This anti-French activism undoubtedly seduced the head of the Wagner group. The Russian militia has established itself in recent years in the Central African Republic and in Mali, although Bamako denies it, each time accompanied by the withdrawal of the French forces deployed on the spot, testifying to a form of strategic downgrading and subsidence of the French influence in Africa.
The group is suspected of also trying to establish itself in Burkina, where Paris must withdraw, at the request of the ruling junta, its special forces installed there since 2008. Wagner has also imposed itself in recent months as a major auxiliary to the Russian army in Ukraine, notably in the front line in the Battle of Bakhmout