Controlling the Wagner Group is one of Putin’s biggest challenges — and he’s already started it.

Controlling all the companies would be a difficult task for the Kremlin, given the opaqueness of communications and the complex way in which Prigozhin’s entire business network was set up.

The Wagner Group’s rebellion brought a new challenge to Vladimir Putin: control of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s business.

a wrote the Wall Street Journal on Sunday This is the most complex operation of its kind since the United Kingdom began liquidating the East India Company in the nineteenth century. nineteenth.

“Putin is now trying to control the corporate monster he helped create, according to Western, Middle Eastern and African officials, along with Russian dissidents and documents detailing more than 100 companies controlled by the Wagner Group.” Publishing.

Controlling all the companies would be a difficult task for the Kremlin, given the opaqueness of communications and the complex way in which Prigozhin’s entire business network was set up. All its employees, from fighters to geologists and trolls Those who spread misinformation on social media got paid cash, and left no trace. Wagner’s agreements with African governments, which are informal in nature and “rely on smuggling and illegal remittances and negotiated personally by Prigozhin,” are one of the factors listed by The Wall Street Journal to exemplify the difficulty of the process.

For now, executives in Africa and the Middle East who hired Wagner have been told by the Russian government to ensure their security that the mercenary companies operating there will not continue to operate independently.

There is also another factor that can complicate the control of these companies. According to letters from Prigozhin’s employee seen by Wall Street, the mercenary leader transferred control of several companies to some of his employees in the weeks before the Wagner Group mutiny.

The American newspaper gives the example of Abbas Juma, who was appointed leader of the supervisory board of the Patriot Media Group (one of Prigozhin’s many companies), a position that once belonged to a former Putin confidant. “He is a very wise and intelligent person, and he does not do anything without reason,” the newspaper quoted Juma as saying.

What is certain is that your empire is under attack. On the Saturday of the mutiny, 24 June, the offices of the Wagner Group and other companies linked to Prigozhin were searched by the Russian secret service, the FSB. Computers, servers, handguns, fake passports and some 44 million euros in cash were seized.

The process of taking control of Wagner’s ship, which began when Prigozhin’s troops took control of Rostov and was marching towards Moscow, was already bearing fruit in the information field. On the same Saturday, the official social media channels of the Wagner Group and Concord, its parent company, were blocked by the Kremlin.

Its director, Yevgeny Zubarev, announced Friday that the news agency Prigozhin created, Ria Fan, is about to close its doors. The same social network founded by “Putin’s chef”, YaRUS, announced that it was suspending its activities and looking for new investors “due to the political situation.”