THE FUSE

Sébastien Ajavon spent the first half of his career building one of West Africa's largest frozen poultry empires and the second half fighting the state that the man he once helped elect now runs. The Beninese billionaire, once the country's most influential businessman after Patrice Talon and the largest single taxpayer in the national budget, has been in political exile in France since 2018, convicted in absentia of cocaine trafficking, his Benin assets seized, his companies wound up. He still insists the case is a fabrication. An African continental court has since ruled that his political rights were violated.