The heir to the Wagner leader tightens his grip on Central African gold

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Pavel Prigozhin, the son of the late founder of the Wagner Group, succeeded in maintaining the group's most important strongholds in the Central African Republic and expanding its activities in gold, weapons, and drugs, despite the killing of his father and the Kremlin's attempt to control the group's legacy.

Pavel, 28 years old, inherited the leadership of Wagner at the age of 25, after the death of his father, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in the explosion of his private plane following a public dispute with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Geneva-based research institution, estimated that the family's legitimate and illicit businesses generate more than $400 million annually, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The initiative also reported that Pavel and about 500 mercenaries under his command controlled gold mines, provided personal protection for President Faustin Archange Touadera, and fought rebel groups, making them an indispensable element for the government.

Researchers and regional military officials also confirmed that he took over the arms trade that his father ran, and that he sells weapons to rebel groups in Sudan and Libya.

With the government’s approval, Pavel raised the production of the largest gold mine in Central Africa, which his father had taken over, to about $250 million annually, according to the initiative. Natalia Dukhan, its chief researcher, said that he easily followed in his father's footsteps in Central African operations.

In April, he gathered officials from Wagner and the government at his hotel in Bangui to discuss ways to ensure the flow of gold to foreign markets, according to government officials and former partners of the group.

Mines Minister Reuven Panam Biltongo, a close ally of Wagner, agreed to issue documents describing the gold as government property.

Over the past three months, gold shipments headed to Belarus, a close ally of the Kremlin, according to local officials and researchers.

After the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin took control of Wagner's activities inside Russia and created the African Corps, which reports directly to Russian defense and military intelligence officials, according to researchers. Pavel rushed to Bangui to meet with the group's local representative, Dmitry Seti, and its military leader, Denis Sopronov.

While Touadera asked Moscow, through a diplomatic message, not to replace Wagner fighters with the Russian army, and then to integrate the mercenaries into the police, army and intelligence.

In this context, Justina Gudzowska, executive director of The Sentry research group in Washington, said that Bangui fought more than any other capital to maintain the protection-for-minerals arrangement because it had proven successful.

Seti, who has become Pavel's second-in-command, runs radio stations funded by Wagner that broadcast anti-Western propaganda in support of Touadera, who won a third term in December in elections that international observers said were neither free nor fair. Critics call the president the Wagner president because of the group's alleged influence.

The group also produces local vodka and beer and controls a large part of the market for tramadol, an opioid analgesic. Witnesses said that this summer, masked fighters in police uniform entered the store of Mahamat Abdurman, a former Wagner distributor who had taken his job. He fled through the back door, and two men chased him and beat him. While his relatives confirmed that he has not been seen since then, and they do not know whether he is alive or dead.

Local researchers saw that Pavel was looking forward to new gold reserves, after his fighters carried out aerial reconnaissance with Russian helicopters of exploration sites near the borders of South Sudan.