Bitter Chocolate (35 page)

Kieffer, as a born-again reporter, was even more contemptuous of rules. Though contributors to
La Lettre
are supposed to be anonymous—they often publish information that could put people's lives in danger if the source was known—Kieffer introduced himself to people as a freelancer for the paper, much to Glaser's unease. “GAK was writing under pseudonyms for the local press as well,” says Glaser with exasperation. “Things would turn up in the Ivorian press that were word for word what he had submitted to
La Lettre.”

As Côte d'Ivoire descended into xenophobia, war and the tyranny of death squads in 2002, GAK took up his old job with a crusader's zeal. He became the front man for the Network, most of whose members were active behind the scenes and even in government offices. They would give him information; he would get it into print while protecting his sources, including
Ivorian journalists who were too afraid to publish it themselves. Sometimes, the Network would disseminate information informally to a broad circle of diplomats, politicians, aid workers and foreign journalists, in the hope that it would eventually reach someone with the power and inclination to do something about it. It was a deadly game, but Kieffer pursued it fearlessly. “People said that GAK didn't care about his safety. That for some reason he no longer cared to live and that's why he was so cavalier,” says Baudelaire Mieu. “But he loved life. He just hated the corruption.”

One way or another, Kieffer exposed schemes for diverting cocoa money to myriad enterprises with little or no benefit for the poor Ivorians who produced the country's best cash crop. Money that properly belonged in funds to support the market price for the farmers was being collected by the new regulatory agencies and used for weapons purchases. The new agencies were taxing the life out of the cocoa producers. They were sinking deeper into poverty even when prices were strong.

The information collected by the Network and reported by Kieffer gradually revealed a tangled conspiracy involving extortion, the diversion of cocoa and coffee shipments to offshore companies (some with ties to companies registered on the Canadian stock exchange), and financing for French and Kosovo-Albanian mercenaries who were brought to Côte d'Ivoire by the Americans to fight Islamic militants in rebel-held territories. Many of the stories involved Pastor Moïse Koré, a mysterious Rasputin-like character said to be Gbagbo's spiritual advisor and a man with strong connections to right-wing American politicians.

One report led to an international police investigation into a complex money-laundering scheme, known as the Comstar affair, run through a mobile phone company. A network of foreign companies, registered in the Virgin Islands and Belgium, with close ties to the Gbagbo regime, imported prepaid phone
cards, which they declared to Ivorian customs at a highly inflated value. Real money from cocoa profits was then funnelled through the company books to various secret destinations—including Liberia, where the laundered funds found their way to opponents of the Charles Taylor regime.

Then there was the equally opaque Magnific A Services operation, a financial group ostensibly based in Los Angeles that collaborated with Lebanese import/export companies and the Italian Mafia to launder money through a phony tomato-processing factory in Côte d'Ivoire.

The most intriguing investigation linked an Israeli financial company called the Lev Mendel Group to Simone Gbagbo, who was a company director in Côte d'Ivoire. With the patronage of the first lady, Lev CI became a private partner with the National Investment Bank of Côte d'Ivoire in managing the finances of the cocoa
filière
. The partnership enabled the bank to divert cocoa money to the president's wife. The bank president, Victor Nembellissini, is a close associate of both the Gbagbo family and the powerful minister Bohoun Bouabré.

In July 2002, Kieffer published details of a European Union investigation that exposed the shady management of ANAPROCI, the big cocoa farmer's cooperative that was notorious among the farmers for diverting profits into other enterprises. The head of ANAPROCI, Henry Amouzou, publicly challenged the Gbagbo regime “to get rid of” Kieffer or he would do it himself. But those who wanted to get rid of Kieffer were forming a long queue.

Before he disappeared, GAK told Antoine Glaser that he was on to something even bigger but he didn't yet have the proof he needed. Glaser has no idea what it was.

A cloak of silence and secrecy enveloped the investigation in the following weeks after the journalist's disappearance, with the
French and Ivorian governments seemingly in collaboration to cover up the Kieffer Affair. Aline Richard at
La Tribune
in Paris, working with others in Abidjan, pushed for answers at the Elysée and the Quai d'Orsay in Paris, where she was sure that people knew more about the case than they were letting on. “I just wanted my government to do its work,” she says. Richard organized the “Truth for Guy-André Kieffer Association,” a group of concerned friends and journalists who staged rallies in Paris. The international group Reporters Without Borders put out numerous media releases about the failure of authorities both in France and Côte d'Ivoire to pursue an investigation of Kieffer's disappearance.

Osange Silou-Kieffer, GAK's second ex-wife and mother to his daughter, became one of his most vocal champions. She took up the cause of his disappearance with a vengeance. Silou-Kieffer is a skilled agitator from the same political school as her former husband. She's short and stocky with a round face and large black eyes that flash fire when she talks passionately—and when she speaks of the disappearance of Guy-André, she is the embodiment of passion. Her public statements in Paris were calculated to embarrass the French government, but she also flew to Abidjan and met Laurent Gbagbo, who, she says, put his hand on his heart and swore that he was sure her husband was still alive. An Ivorian newspaper that is the voice of Gbagbo's Front Populaire Ivoirien party reported that Kieffer was living in Ghana, where he had fled for his own safety. An anonymous caller told Osange that rebels had kidnapped Kieffer and he was secretly being held in a stronghold close to the Malian border. “I listened politely,” Osange told reporters, “but I resented it as an insult to my intelligence.”

She deftly dispelled rumours and innuendo about her ex-husband while making it clear that she felt it was the Ivorian government's behaviour that needed investigating, not GAK's. She told the French media that her husband (no mention was ever
made that they were not still married) had many enemies, but one name came up repeatedly in their frequent communications—that of Paul Antoine Bohoun Bouabré. “I don't know if he is mixed up with this affair,” she told reporters carefully but deliberately.

As Silou-Kieffer took up the crusade from Paris, Rita, his Ghanaian-born wife, faded into the background, fearing for her own life and descending into poverty. Kieffer's friends and associates found themselves under constant threat. Guy-André's brother Bernard emerged as another pleading voice, issuing press releases asking for information about his brother's fate. The extended family, spread out over three continents, kept up the pressure, young Sébastien doing all he could to push the Canadian government in Ottawa for help.

Eventually, this ad hoc coalition of crusading women, foreign journalists, well-informed insiders from the Network, family members and worried friends had an impact at the Quai d'Orsay. The French government suddenly abandoned its strategy of demonizing Kieffer and turned to damage control. President Jacques Chirac had called Laurent Gbagbo shortly after the kidnapping to inquire what Côte d'Ivoire was doing about it. (There has never been a similar inquiry from the Canadian government.) But there had been nothing more. In mid-May, a month after the aborted meeting at the Prima Centre, the Ministry of Justice in Paris appointed a judge, Patrick Ramaël, to investigate Kieffer's disappearance.

Judge Ramaël was no stranger to Ivorian politics. France had sent him to investigate the murder of Jean Hélène, the Radio France reporter shot dead by police six months before the kidnapping of Kieffer. Ramaël's unsubtle nickname among policemen was “Le Bulldog.”

The judge made his way to Abidjan in May 2004, bringing with him an entourage of police, forensic investigators and detectives who pushed the Ivorian police into the background. Tudor
Hera, the front man for the Canadian Embassy on the Kieffer file, was astonished at the size and strength of the French police probe: “Whatever people were saying about France not caring about this operation, it certainly didn't appear that way when Ramaël arrived.”

One of the first orders of business for Ramaël was to get telephone records. With a team of French experts and the most modern technology available, the investigators sorted through a million calls a day for a month in order to trace people's movements. From this, the French police got their first leads.

The Ivorians gave Judge Ramaël permission to question Michel Legré, the last person known to have seen GAK alive. Legré denied any responsibility, but his mobile phone records suggested otherwise, as investigators tracked his movements through indisputable satellite footprints. The records indicated that, on April 16 at 1:30 p.m., Legré was in the Prima shopping centre zone, where he presumably met Guy-André Kieffer; at 4:00, he was in the area of the ministry offices, including the office of Minister of Finance Bohoun Bouabré; at 7:00, he was back at the Prima Centre shopping plaza; and at 9:00, he was at Houphouët-Boigny International Airport, where Guy-André Kieffer's little Japanese-made car with the Canadian-flag logo was later discovered, abandoned in the parking lot. Legré's phone records also showed he was in continuous contact with people close to the minister of finance, including on the day that Kieffer disappeared.

With so much incriminating evidence, Ramaël was able to break Legré, who gave the French magistrate the names of eight people he claimed were involved in Kieffer's abduction. The eight were all part of the inner circle of Bohoun Bouabré. The list included the finance minister's cabinet director, Aubert Zohoré; Victor Nembellissini, head of the National Investment Bank (the one with Simone Gbagbo's company Lev CI as its partner); Pastor Moïse Koré, Gbagbo's advisor and chargé
d'affaires for Defence; Patrice Bailly, head of security; and two senior military officers. Under questioning, Legré told Ramaël that at 4:00 he had indeed been in the zone of government ministries, as his phone record indicates, and had gone to the office of Aubert Zohoré, where Bohoun Bouabré himself gave Legré an envelope full of West African francs (amounting to 1,500 euros), calling them “professional fees.”

The case was definitely pointing towards a high-level murder by agents of the state, rather than a revenge killing for a bad business deal. Kieffer's computer was found in the apartment of an associate of Legré's. GAK's friends knew that he was never far from his precious laptop, the electronic hub of his Network, and he would never entrust it to any third party, replete as it was with damning documents. Ramaël discovered that someone had opened the computer and attempted to access its files half an hour after Kieffer was bundled into the four-by-four in the Prima parking lot. Whoever abducted the journalist did so because of the man's work, not his personal business affairs, concluded the investigators, who also discovered that Kieffer's hard drive had been wiped clean. No matter what the rumour mill was spitting out, Kieffer's disappearance had all the hallmarks of a political assassination.

The pressure was now on the Côte d'Ivoire government to do something. Predictably, they found a conspicuous scapegoat. Prosecutors charged Michel Legré with complicity in kidnapping, illegal detention and murder, even though no body had been found. Reporters Without Borders called it an effort to focus attention on one person instead of pursuing all those Legré had named as being complicit. It was revealing that the Ivorian police also charged Legré with criminal defamation of character for giving up the names of eight influential Ivorian
men—an act that blocked any further efforts by the French magistrate to get Legré to tell him more about the roles played by those individuals.