The Amazing Saga of Foutanga Babani Sissoko (Part 4)
(Editor’s note: In Part 1, I referred to Foutanga Babani Sissoko as Gambian. While many of his business operations were based there, he was actually born in Mali, which will become important in this concluding chapter.)
(Editor’s other note: This took a while to write because the more I dug into Mr. Sissoko’s exploits, the less sure I was how to react to them and talk about them.)
When we left Foutanga Babani Sissoko, he had just pled guilty to a reduced charge of paying an illegal “gratuity” to a U.S. Customs agent. After paying a $250,000 fine, he found himself in federal prison. He remained there for just 43 days before being released to continue serving his sentence under house arrest in one of his luxurious Miami properties.
That, too, was short-lived. After a couple of months, he was deported to his native Mali to serve the rest of his sentence there. It would later come to light that this followed an anonymous $1.2 million donation to a Miami homeless shelter that was actually orchestrated by the judge in Sissoko’s case.
And so, in November 1997, Sissoko finally left Miami. Estimates of the amount he managed to spend during his time there range from $14 million to more than $40 million.
Again, his timing served him well. It was just two months later that the Dubai Islamic Bank figured out what was going on and went ballistic. They sued Sissoko, Citibank, any other bank where Sissoko had accounts. They subpoenaed bank records and went after anybody who had received money. (They did at least let the homeless shelter and the high school marching band off the hook.)
The U.S. Justice and Treasury Departments got involved. There were grand juries and money laundering investigations in the U.S., France, Switzerland, and the U.A.E. Sissoko’s right hand man in Miami, Abdou Karim Pouye, the man who signed most of Sissoko’s checks, was arrested in Senegal. Mohammed Ayoub, the hapless bank manager who fell for Sissoko’s claims of supernatural powers, was tried for fraud in the U.A.E. In his defense, he insisted that Sissoko had controlled him magically to force him to do what he did. He was sentenced to three years in prison and, so it was rumored, forced to undergo an exorcism.
As for Sissoko himself, fate - as it always seemed to - sheltered him from the storm. The Dubai Islamic Bank got a default judgement against him in the U.S. but all but about $2 million had already moved out of the country. He was tried in absentia in the U.A.E. and in France and convicted both times. But Mali has no foreign extradition treaties and rejected all requests to have him arrested.
As for finishing out his prison sentence, Mali had other ideas. Sissoko had poured money into the country in his glory days - schools, roads, hospitals. He arrived to a hero’s welcome from huge crowds. He was given a praise name, Baba Sora, which indicates someone who was skilled in battle. He moved into the former South Korean embassy and went on with his life. For 12 years, he was a member of the Malian parliament. Between the diplomatic immunity that gave him and Mali’s refusal to extradite him, he was untouchable.
He also kept giving away money - to the government, to villages and people in need, and especially to musicians. As Baba Sora, he is known to this day as one of the greatest patrons of Malian griots. In Mali’s pre-colonial culture, griots were much like medieval bards. They were traveling poets, singers, and storytellers as well as carriers of news, registrars of births, deaths, and marriages, and respected neutral arbiters of disputes. Today, it’s mainly their musical role that remains.
There is hardly a musician in Mali without a story of how Baba Sora helped them. He gave out cash, plane tickets, cars, houses, whatever was needed - even a large gold bar in one instance. Literally hundreds of songs have been written about him. Here’s one of the more accessible ones to westerners, “Baba” by Kalif Seita.
So years went by, and while financial and legal storms raged around the world, Sissoko lived a very different life in Mali. Eventually, however, the money ran out. By the time a BBC reporter caught up with him in 2018, Sissoko was living in a small compound near his native village of Dabia. He claimed to be poor once again, and dismissed the story of the Dubai bank swindle and his supposed magical powers.
“If a person had that kind of power,” he said, “why would he work? If you have that kind of power you can stay where you are and rob all the banks of the world. In the United States, France, Germany, everywhere. Even here in Africa. You could rob all the banks you want.”
Foutanga Babani Sissoko died in 2021 at the age of 79. He left behind many conflicting stories of who he was. Was he a self-interested swindler and con man? A Robin Hood figure stealing from the rich to put their money to better use? A bit of everything between?
He wrecked lives of those who were caught up in his wake but lacked his preternatural luck. He amassed enormous wealth, and then gave it all away to die poor. But even there, there was an element of self-interest, buying influential friends when he needed them. People who worked for him noted that he would randomly shower them with extravagant gifts, but never actually pay them. In this way, the people around him were dependent on him and his whims, keeping him in control.
In the end, all the conflicting stories of who Foutanga Babani Sissoko, aka Baba Sora, was somehow seem to all be true at once. I’ll let him have the final word himself, from an interview with a journalist covering African music.
“Once you’ve gained your own good fortune, you must help the next one, your parents, your friends. You cannot take happiness like a lemon all by yourself. You must pass the bread to everyone. People asked, ‘How does Baba still have money?’ Well, it’s simple. No one reveals the door to his happiness. You never tell your secrets.”
til next time,
-- MP
Spy My Stuff
You can find me at MarkParragh.com and my books here at Amazon. The John Crane series is currently in Kindle Unlimited, and so exclusive to Amazon. Rumrunners can also be found at other fine ebook retailers.
Reading: With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz. New Bond novel! His Forever and a Day might be my favorite non-Fleming Bond of them all, so I’m excited about this.
Watching: Moon Dog, an adorable short about maybe not always going with your first instinct.
Listening To: Crystal. By 80s synth band New Order, believe it or not.