Pavel Prigozhin, the 28-year-old son of the late Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, now runs a sprawling mercenary and business empire generating more than $400 million a year from gold mines, arms dealing, mercenaries and drugs, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal. From a base in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), he commands roughly 500 mercenaries and has not only salvaged his father's African operations after the 2023 plane crash that killed the Wagner chief, but expanded them.
From playboy to mercenary boss
Pavel was only 25 when his father's private jet exploded 28,000 feet over Russia in August 2023, two months after Yevgeny Prigozhin's aborted armed rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Once known as a pampered playboy who posed aboard private jets and on the family superyacht, Pavel had in fact been groomed for succession for years, researchers say.
At age 20, his father put him in charge of the family's luxury villas and apartment buildings, and Yevgeny named Pavel as principal heir in his will, according to the investigative group All Eyes on Wagner, which published the document from a court filing. His father also shaped Pavel's public persona as a Russian patriot: he fought in Syria's civil war, where he received Wagner's Black Cross for bravery, and later served as an intelligence officer and drone operator in Ukraine. Six months into the 2022 invasion, Yevgeny boasted online: "My son is already taking part in the special military operation."
Gold, guns, vodka and tramadol in Bangui
From Bangui, Pavel and his roughly 500 mercenaries have seized control of gold mines, provide personal security to CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and battle insurgent groups, making the Russians indispensable to the government, the Journal reports. He has also taken over his father's arms trade, selling weaponry to rebel groups in Sudan and Libya, according to researchers and regional military officials.
The empire stretches well beyond fighting. Wagner markets a vodka called Wa Wa Wa, or "Fire and Fire," and a beer called Africa Ti L'Or, meaning "Africa is Gold," and controls much of the local market for tramadol, a prescription opioid. "Bangui fought harder than any other capital to maintain the regime-protection-for-minerals arrangement precisely because it had worked so well," said Justyna Gudzowska, executive director of the investigative group The Sentry. "When it comes to operations in the Central African Republic, Pavel has followed in his father's footsteps with ease," added senior researcher Nathalia Dukhan.
A new gold pipeline to Belarus
The Journal also uncovered a shift in where the empire's gold flows. For the past three months, gold from the CAR, where extraction is controlled by Wagner, has been shipped to Belarus rather than through the markets of the United Arab Emirates, bypassing international controls. In April, Pavel reportedly gathered Wagner representatives and government officials in a Bangui hotel to arrange the exports, and the CAR's Minister of Mining agreed to assist with documents presenting the gold as state property, the report says.
From military force to organized crime
Researchers say the transition marks a darker turn for what was once a powerful special-forces group. "Wagner went from a powerful special-forces group to a disowned network which seems to be falling into organized crime," said Lou Osborn, an investigator with the Switzerland-based nonprofit Inpact, which tracks Wagner's activities in Africa. "I guess Pavel was authorized to keep operating, meaning he brokered an agreement with the Kremlin or was made nonthreatening."
The takeaway: three years after his father's spectacular fall, Pavel Prigozhin has kept the family's mercenary-and-mining machine running in Africa and made it even more profitable, building a $400-million-a-year network of gold, guns and drugs that answers to no one but Moscow's shadow and his own ambition.
Sources: The Wall Street Journal • NDTV • Times Now World
Watch: recent YouTube news coverage of Pavel Prigozhin and the investigation into his Wagner empire (YouTube topic search; no single video covers the full story yet).
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Long Road Ahead B (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0