A job posting on a Russian recruitment platform recently sought a project manager to establish a business operation from the ground up in Togo, West Africa. The employer was A7, a Russian cryptocurrency network operating under Western sanctions, run by a fugitive oligarch and a state defense sector bank.
The listing points to Russia's continued effort to build an alternative payments infrastructure after its banks were cut off from Western financial systems following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A7's expansion into Africa aligns with Russia's broader push across the continent, where it has deepened political ties in the wake of several coups in the Sahel region and Madagascar. It has concluded a series of trade and military agreements.
According to Elise Thomas, a senior investigator at the London-based Centre for Information Resilience, A7 and its backers may be working to integrate their operations into the Kremlin's wider strategic agenda in Africa.
Argentine President Javier Milei is facing renewed scrutiny over his promotion of a cryptocurrency called $Libra, which surged in value before rapidly collapsing in 2025, leaving investors with significant losses and triggering a formal investigation.
Milei had maintained that he was merely drawing attention to a private venture and had no personal involvement with the token. However, phone records obtained by The New York Times and first reported by Argentine cable news channel C5N, drawn from a federal prosecutor's investigation, show that seven calls took place between Milei and one of the entrepreneurs behind $Libra on the same night Milei posted about the coin on X. The calls occurred both before and after his post, though their content is not known.
Additional documents suggest that Milei received regular payments from an entrepreneur during his time as a congressman. Milei is named as a person of interest in the ongoing federal investigation but has not been formally charged. He has not publicly responded to the call logs or other newly surfaced materials.