Missing reporter stirs trouble on three continents

Journalist feared killed for exposing corruption in Africa

Rory Carroll in Abidjan
Sunday June 6, 2004
The Observer

Guy-Andre Kieffer is stirring up trouble again. A journalist with a nose for news that powerful people prefer buried, he is troubling three governments, a multi-million- pound industry and a nation on the cusp of war.
Thanks to the rumpled reporter, criminal investigations are under way into the secretive regime which runs Ivory Coast and exports almost half the world's cocoa, raw ingredient for chocolate.
Except this time the tempest is caused not by an article detailing corruption but the author himself. Seven weeks ago he was bundled into a car by uniformed men and has not been seen since, prompting concern that Kieffer has been disposed of.
His would not be the first tale of abduction, torture and murder in Ivory Coast, but potentially it could be the most explosive. The 54-year-old held French and Canadian citizenship and the two governments want answers.
At least eight key players in Ivorian finance and politics are implicated and many believe the trail leads to the inner circle of President Laurent Gbagbo, who is due to fly to the United States today on a private business trip.
The story starts four years ago when Kieffer, after 18 years at the French business publication La Tribune, swapped Paris for Abidjan, the commercial capital of West Africa's most stable, prosperous state.
Described by friends as left-wing and idealistic, he was also an agronomist and plunged into a new career as an adviser to the government and a contributor to the French-published journal La Lettre du Continent. But things were changing fast. Simmering ethnic and political tension boiled over into a rebellion in September 2002 which divided the country into the rebel-held north and government-held south.
Kieffer expected official help to probe murky cocoa deals, worth an estimated £350 million annually, but with a civil war to fight the government lost enthusiasm for dossiers about discrepancies in the accounts of planters, traders and the state bank.
Some profits from satisfying the West's chocolate consumers paid for weapons, some lined the pockets of the elite, said one disillusioned member of the government's anti-corruption drive.
A peace deal officially ended the war last year, but power-sharing between the rebels and government recently collapsed, raising the prospect of renewed conflict just as United Nations peacekeepers arrive in force.
In this climate of intrigue Kieffer published several exposés of cocoa deals which infuriated factions close to the presidency. 'Here you can talk about politics with violent words, but the one thing that makes people mad is money. If you track money you risk the death penalty,' said Jacques Huillery, chief of the Agence France-Presse news agency in Abidjan.
"Cocoa is a dark, confused world. You don't know where the money goes. And into it came Guy-André, obsessed about telling the truth."
According to the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, which has launched its own probe, Kieffer was threatened at least twice by people close to the government before he disappeared.
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Local media reported that he was abducted by four uniformed men at Prima Centre, a shopping complex on 16 April. Since then his two mobile phones have been turned off and there have been no sightings, only rumours.
When The Observer interviewed car park attendants at Prima Centre, not one admitted witnessing anything. They expressed vagueness about the case, despite it dominating the news for weeks.
On a visit to the port city his French wife, Osange Silou, told the Associated Press: "I hope to get very precise replies as to where he is if he is still living, or where his corpse is if he is dead."
The pro-government press claims he is alive and in hiding as part of an attempt to destabilise the President. But few expect to see the father of three again. Immigrants in Abidjan's shanty towns know too well the military's adeptness at making perceived enemies of the state disappear. A leaked UN report said at least 20 people vanished during disturbances in March.
After pressure from President Jacques Chirac and the Canadian government the Ivorian authorities are claiming progress: Kieffer's car was found at Abidjan airport and Michel Legré, a brother-in-law of Simone Gbagbo, the President's wife, has been charged with complicity in kidnapping and murder.
He has allegedly named eight accomplices, including Aubert Zohore, director of the Finance Minister's office, Patrice Bailly, the presidential security chief, and Pastor Moïse Koré, the presidential 'spiritual adviser'. All deny any involvement. But there is no sign of a breakthrough.
The French magistrate given the case has complained of being blocked by Ivorian authorities and there is suspicion that Legré, who was due to meet the journalist at the Prima Centre, is a scapegoat.
The exodus of foreign correspondents from Abidjan, once the base for West Africa, has accelerated. A French radio journalist, Jean Hélène, was shot dead by a policeman last October. Kieffer's disappearance deepened his colleagues' sense of vulnerability.
For now the chain-smoking Frenchman inhabits a twilight zone, shifting between the past and present tense.


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