When he arrived at Le Monde's offices on September 30, Ephrem Yalike Ngonzo seemed consumed by anxiety – his eyes darting about as he searched for the right words. For months, the 29-year-old Central African journalist had been waiting to clear his conscience. "I helped keep my country in chaos," he murmured. "Today, I want to denounce everything, to make amends, to free myself from my shame and my regrets."

To come to Paris, he had to flee the Central African Republic (CAR) and death threats from the Russian private military company Wagner, now omnipotent in the country's capital, Bangui. Ngonzo is well placed to assess its power. For two and a half years, between 2019 and 2022, he was in charge of relations between the mercenary group and the local press. In other words, by his own admission, he was Wagner's man of "disinformation."

It took him a year and a half to escape from a system in which he had, in a way, become a prisoner. He eventually succeeded with the help of the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa. For eight months, Le Monde, alongside nine international media partners coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a network of investigative journalists created in 2017 to continue the work of silenced reporters, investigated the story of this "repentant" journalist and, through it, Wagner's maneuvers in the CAR – a country that was the laboratory for the group's influencing techniques on the African continent.

A tempting financial offer

Ngonzo's life changed when his phone rang one morning in November 2019. At the time, he was the young editor-in-chief of Le Potentiel Centrafricain, an online media outlet with a strong following in the country. The caller introduced himself as a member of the "Russian mission in the Central African Republic," the name behind which Wagner has concealed his communications activities since the arrival of its first mercenaries in 2018.

An appointment was made for that afternoon. At a Bangui café, Ngonzo met a Russian man. This stranger introduced himself using the nickname "Misha" – he wasn't going to reveal his identity. The journalist observed him to be "very nervous" and noticed that he wore a pistol on his belt. His proposal? A secret collaboration.

Le Monde is now able to reveal who "Misha" really is: Mikhail Mikhailovich Prudnikov. Initially involved with Nashi, a pro-Putin youth movement, the 37-year-old is one of the people in charge in the CAR branch of Africa Politology, one of the main components of Wagner's disinformation network on the continent.

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