Thread by @YarnoRitzen

REVEALED: Russia's use of non-existing journalists/experts in francophone Africa as part of an influence campaign.

In 'Africa's Ghost Reporters', we reveal a campaign that has impacted over a dozen francophone countries, with more than 200 articles published in local media. 🧵

This is an investigation that has a little bit of Sixth Sense, a sprinkle of 2016 election interference, some links to previous reporting on this topic, and mostly it is a warning that nobody on the Internet is who they say they are.

This story mainly is about 'geopolitical and military expert' Gregoire Cyrille Dongobada. He's on Twitter and Facebook, but more importantly: he's a published writer in many media in Africa.

His articles have appeared in countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, CAR, and Cameroon.

But there is something strange about our friend Gregoire. He has no history anywhere before his first post in early 2021.

Maybe that's because that person in the picture is not Gregoire Dongobada, but a man named Jean Claude Sendeoli.

They are the same person.

Does this mean that Sendeoli is roleplaying as Dongobada and getting published that way?

Nope, because Mr. Sendeoli - a beloved teacher and referee for CAR's football association - actually passed away in September 2020, several months before Dongobada first appeared online.

We know this because we have footage and images of his funeral, people commemorated him on Facebook, and he's actually mentioned in FIFA's obituary of that year (2020).

Link here: publications.fifa.com/en/annual-repo…

So what's going on here?

Well, we obtained WhatsApp conversations and documents showing who is behind this whole operation.

As it turns out, there are middlemen in Western Africa, approaching media to publish articles for a fee.

In this case it was a journalist from Togo who would send documents to the media to get published, provide them the name of the 'writer', and then pay the local media a fee (about $80 per article )i.

This middleman forwarded Word docs from someone else, our evidence shows.

Our Togolese journalist even mentioned a 'client' who was paying for the whole thing (he later claimed to us he was just helping other journalists).

We also obtained those Word documents he sent, and we found out who is behind this operation. It's a known name in propaganda.

We analysed the metadata of the Word documents, and a couple of things stood out.

Firstly, we found Cyrillic writing, which is surprising for a region where the vast majority of the people speak French.

Sort of a big hint as to who might be behind this, but we got even luckier.

One document had a bunch of numbers under the 'Last Saved by' column, there was a bunch of numbers that looked an awful lot like a phone number, and lo and behold: the country code for Russia (well, one of them) is +7.

So can we find out who this phone number belongs to?

With the help of some reverse number apps, we found out that this phone number belonged to someone named Seth Boampong. And funnily enough, there is a Seth Boampong - a Ghanaian name - with a connection to Russia.

His full name is Seth Boampong Wiredu, and he has a history...

In 2020, @CNN investigated US election interference from Africa. It's a great story, about Nigerian and Ghanaians being paid to post inflammatory stuff on Facebook at the behest of Russia and Prighozhin's Internet Research Agency (IRA).

edition.cnn.com/2020/03/12/wor…

Our friend Seth was part of this operation, and he was working for Prighozhin's IRA, although he denied it on camera of course.

(We looked for Seth, but sadly couldn't locate him. And he didn't respond to our emailed questions)

After the CNN story, Seth showed up in a Wagner-funded action movie called Tourist. It's about Russian military trainers that have to prevent a coup d'etat.

Seth plays the role of Maxim, a priest (not sure if it's a coincidence, but Seth's son is also called Maxim).

Anyway, this is the same year that the Russian influence operation in francophone Africa started.

So Seth again seems to be involved in a propaganda campaign, this time one that criticizes France's role and promotes Russia's role in the Sahel region.

In total, we found about 200 articles attributed to this campaign in local media all over French-speaking Africa. They all feature 'experts' or 'journalists' that don't seem to exist.

Here are some names that were used in this campaign, that were sent by the same middleman.

This work also builds on @FbdnStories and their reporting on a CAR-based Russian propaganda unit.

This story by @ILea_Pe mentions our Dongobada (it calls him 'Gregoire D'). So now we know whose pics he uses and who is responsible for part of it.

forbiddenstories.org/in-the-central…

Credits where they are due: this story would not have happened without these people.

Justin Yarga (@y_jus) and Hanneke Slob (@hannekeslb), who had a dataset that brought us 90% of the way.

And @PhilipObaji for his knowledge about everything that Russia does in Africa.

@y_jus @hannekeslb @PhilipObaji Oh, and you can watch the full film here. It has some good comments by experts about both France's and Russia's role in the region, both politically as well as when it comes to how media are used:

Also, I'm sure @clarrissaward might be interested in seeing what her old friend Seth Boampong Wiredu is up to these days.