# Lobaye Invest **Lobaye Invest** is the [[Central African Republic]] mining company through which [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]]'s network was paid for the [[Wagner Group]]'s protection of President [[Faustin-Archange Touadéra]]. It was registered in Bangui in **October 2017**, as Wagner was arriving. In the U.S. Treasury's words it specializes "in the extraction of gold and diamonds," and it held exploration rights at several gold and diamond sites. ## The CAR version of the model The Central African Republic is the purest case of Russia's security-for-resources trade (see [[Security-for-Minerals]]). Touadéra's government, facing armed groups that controlled most of the country, got Russian "instructors" in 2018 after a UN arms-embargo exemption. Wagner fighters guarded the president, fought rebel coalitions, and were later accused by UN experts of abuses against civilians. In return, Prigozhin-linked companies received mining rights. Lobaye Invest was the first of them; [[Diamville]] handled diamond trading, and the country's largest Wagner-linked gold asset, the Ndassima mine, belongs to a different company, [[Midas Ressources]]. Lobaye Invest also reportedly owns Radio Lengo Songo, a station used for pro-Russian messaging in the CAR, which shows that the business arm and the influence operation sat in the same corporate structure. ## Timeline | Date | Action | |---|---| | Oct 2017 | Founded in Bangui by Dmitry Sytyi, described by Treasury as "Prigozhin's employee"; directed by Yevgeny Khodotov | | Sep 23, 2020 | U.S. Treasury sanctions Lobaye Invest and M Finans as "owned or controlled by Prigozhin" and "linked to PMC Wagner's operations in CAR" | | Feb 2023 | EU sanctions Lobaye Invest along with [[Diamville]], [[Meroe Gold]], [[M Invest]] and the Wagner-linked radio station | | Jul 20, 2023 | UK sanctions Lobaye Invest and its founder Sytyi | | Nov 7, 2024 | UK sanctions Khodotov | Sources differ on its parent. Treasury ties it to M Finans, while the sanctions-research firm Kharon described it as an M Invest subsidiary. ## See Also - [[Central African Republic]] · [[Faustin-Archange Touadéra]] · [[Wagner Group]] · [[Africa Corps]] · [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]] - [[M Invest]] · [[Meroe Gold]] · [[Diamville]] · [[Midas Ressources]] · [[Security-for-Minerals]] · [[Gold]]