Unidentified gunmen kidnapped Swiss geologist Luca Maggini and a local miner north of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, and killed them soon after, according to a statement from the local public prosecutor’s office. The gunmen struck near the village of Gbango-Carriere, roughly 55 kilometers north of the capital, and seized a staff sergeant in the Central African Army during the same raid.
Frédéric Pounou, a geologist on the same survey team, said Maggini was leaving the site when gunmen seized him, and that he “fell into the hands of the attackers.” Maggini worked for ADMOG Gold, an Emirati firm with a gold-mining contract from the Central African government, and had been surveying two mines in the area.
The High Court in the nearby town of Damara has opened a criminal investigation into the killings, court officials confirmed days after the attack. Officials haven’t named any suspects publicly. Central African Republic Infrastructure Minister Pascal Koyagbele acknowledged the reputational stakes for a government actively courting foreign mining investment, warning the deaths could “tarnish the country’s image.”
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The Central African Republic sits on deposits of gold, diamonds, uranium, lithium and timber, and companies from Canada, China, France, Russia, Rwanda and the US all hold contracts to extract them. That wealth has done little to stabilize a country stuck in near-constant conflict since 2013, when a coalition of rebel groups toppled then-President François Bozizé.
Under a 2019 accord, 14 armed factions agreed to lay down arms alongside the government, though six have since abandoned that commitment, and large stretches of the countryside remain outside state control. The country was also where Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, first gained a foothold in Africa, embedding itself partly through security arrangements tied to mining concessions.
Gunmen killed nine Chinese nationals at a separate gold mine in 2023, an attack the government blamed on a rebel coalition that denied responsibility and pointed back at Wagner. Maggini’s death adds a Western national and a European company to a list of mining-linked killings that, until now, had mostly involved Chinese workers and Chinese-run operations.
