By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, Matthew Anderson, and Mark Feldman
Documents obtained by Africanist Press, including financial transactions, emails, and records of foreign agent registrations in the United States, reveal how the Maada Bio regime continues to depend on foreign cyber intelligence and communication agents, particularly from Nigeria and the United States, to facilitate both domestic and international communications and to conduct transnational repression against Sierra Leoneans, both in the United States and abroad.
Our investigation uncovered that between April 2021 and September 2024, the Maada Bio administration contracted several foreign agents to assist in coordinating its transnational repression and propaganda efforts in the United States and beyond. This campaign, which started in earnest at least since April 2021, has been ongoing to date, and the extensive list of foreign agents includes organizations such as Mercury Public Affairs, Weintraub Communications LLC, and Prunedge Ltd. Their personnel consist of former military and intelligence operatives, cyber and IT specialists, academics, lawyers, and media professionals. The transnational network of their operations spans West Africa, Europe, and the United States, with clients and operatives located in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In early September 2023, for example, Maada Bio’s administration signed a contract with Mercury Public Affairs LLC, a U.S.-based firm known for its high-stakes public affairs services. The agreement stipulates that Mercury Public Affairs will arrange media interviews and provide public relations services for President Bio and other officials within his administration.
Under the contract, the Bio administration is obligated to pay a monthly fee of $25,000, starting from August 1, 2023, and continuing until September 1, 2024. Additionally, there is a one-time compliance fee of $5,000, and the Bio administration must also cover any documented expenses incurred by Mercury while providing these services. Over the course of 12 months, the contract is expected to cost Sierra Leonean taxpayers at least $300,000, not including further operational expenses or costs incurred by Mercury staff during the contract period. The agreement was signed on behalf of the Bio administration by Barba Brima Fortune, the current Secretary to President Maada Bio, and on behalf of Mercury Public Affairs by John F. Lonergan.
Mercury Public Affairs staff did not respond to inquiries from Africanist Press regarding their relationship with the Bio administration or how they were hired as foreign agents, despite several attempts to contact their offices in New York and Washington, DC.
Mercury Public Affairs LLC is just one of several foreign agencies that have recently been involved in Sierra Leone’s internal politics, both overtly and covertly. Other notable entities include Weintraub Communications LLC and Prunedge Ltd.
In this initial report, we focus on the involvement of the Nigerian-owned company, Prunedge, in the political landscape and propaganda activities of the Maada Bio regime in Sierra Leone.
Prunedge Ltd, a Nigerian-owned company, was incorporated in the United Kingdom as a private limited company on April 28, 2021. Its registration number is 13362244, and the registered director is Joel Ogunsola Toluwani, a Nigerian national reportedly born in 1994.
On July 15, 2025, the UK Registrar of Companies issued a notice to Prunedge stating that, unless “cause is shown to the contrary,” the company would be struck off the register and dissolved within two months. The notice further indicated that upon the company’s dissolution, all property and rights vested in or held in trust for the company would be considered bona vacantia and would belong to the Crown.
Corporate records in the United Kingdom show that Prunedge has primarily been a dormant company since its incorporation in 2021 and was officially dissolved by the UK Registrar of Companies on September 30, 2025.
While Prunedge was being struck off the corporate registrar in the United Kingdom, our investigation discovered that Joel Ogunsola had in fact similarly incorporated Prunedge LLC in Texas on June 12, 2020, with Pantote Solutions LLC, led by Adebayo Adeleke, serving as the registered agent.
Adebayo Adeleke describes himself on various websites and marketing materials as “a seasoned combat veteran of the United States Army with 20 years of service.” He claims that his “security experience has helped him provide data and insights on security challenges in Africa.” One of his websites states that he founded an intelligence-gathering application called the RouteWatch App in 2021. The app reportedly uses crowdsourcing and AI technologies to provide real-time, geographically specific data and alerts to users traveling across cities, offering information and warnings about potential dangers.
Corporate registration documents list Adebayo Adeleke and Pantote Solutions LLC as the agent and organizer for Joel Ogunsola’s Prunedge LLC in Texas. A new investigation by Africanist Press uncovered evidence showing that Prunedge is one of several foreign agents contracted by President Maada Bio’s regime in Sierra Leone to coordinate domestic and international communications and propaganda campaigns on behalf of the government within the United States and abroad.
An email submitted to the United States Department of Justice indicates that the Bio regime instructed another of its foreign agents, Weintraub Communications LLC, operated by Jeffrey R. Weintraub, to collaborate with Joel Ogunsola and the team at Prunedge to carry out the Bio regime’s operations in the United States.
In the email, which originated from the Information Ministry, Bio’s Minister of Information requested that Jeffrey Weintraub review the terms of a contract signed in September 2024. The surface-level details of this contract involve both covert operations and “overt opportunities in innovation and technology.”
“I am copying our partner at Prunedge, who will directly engage with you on the contract and logistics,” stated Bio’s Minister of Information on August 7, 2024. He added, “I look forward to the revised brief, and Joel’s excellent team will facilitate the contract immediately.”
Weintraub was tasked with working alongside Joel Ogunsola, who had established a branch of Prunedge in Sierra Leone, incorporated as Prunedge SL Limited. According to the agreement, Weintraub is expected to advise representatives of the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) on the U.S. media landscape and to identify opportunities and challenges in communicating Sierra Leone’s activities, policies, and leadership.
The agreement also stipulates that Weintraub will “solicit and coordinate leading U.S. journalists” to publish opinion pieces and conduct interviews with GoSL leaders, as well as arrange speaking opportunities for GoSL representatives at relevant U.S. organizations, forums, and stakeholder events.
Foreign agent registration documents indicate that Weintraub was allegedly hired in August 2024. However, evidence from Africanist Press suggests that Weintraub’s involvement in the Bio regime’s transnational campaigns dates back to at least April 2021, which coincides with the incorporation of Prunedge in the UK. This timeframe also aligns with when the Bio regime contracted former U.S. Green Beret Jerry Torres to initiate an international cybersecurity operation aimed at targeting the regime’s democratic critics in the United States.
Similar to Prunedge and other Bio-hired foreign agents, Jerry Torres was contracted to carry out a range of covert and overt operations, including the development of offensive cyber strategies to “identify, take down, and remove negative social media content and online attacks against the President and his administration.” He was also tasked with expanding existing cyber investigative and intelligence frameworks to “identify, track, and investigate sources of false narratives, fake news, and harmful materials that could destabilize the Government of Sierra Leone.” According to the documents, information gathered through Torres’s offensive cyber strategies was intended to be used for prosecuting individuals and organized groups in the diaspora.
Torres’s affiliation with the Bio regime can also be traced back to at least the second quarter of 2021. The connection developed following a series of reports by the Africanist Press in early 2021, which revealed significant corruption within the regime. The Sierra Leone Embassy in Washington, then headed by Abubakarr Sidique Wai—who holds dual citizenship in the United States—played a vital role in establishing Torres’s relationship with President Julius Maada Bio and other Sierra Leonean politicians.
Sierra Leonean officials were found to have paid at least US$5 million to various cyber intelligence groups between July 2021 and October 2022, coinciding with Jerry Torres’s full involvement with the Bio administration. The funds included over $2 million paid to Cognyte Technologies Limited and $2.2 million to North Star Enterprises. We discovered that funds were directly transferred by the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) to Cognyte Technologies Limited and North Star Enterprises as payments for both cyber intelligence solutions and public order equipment for security agencies in Sierra Leone. For example, we identified 19 fund transfers processed by the BSL between July 7, 2021, and July 18, 2022, to Cognyte Technologies Limited and North Star Enterprises for cyber intelligence solutions and public order equipment. Among these, eight transactions totaling US$2,081,999.80 were made directly to Cognyte Technologies for “national security purposes.” Notably, five transactions on July 7, 2021, totaled US$831,999.80 and ranged between US$84,316.00 and US$310,000.00.
In addition to the payments in July 2021, two more payments of US$310,000 and US$630,000 were processed to Cognyte Technologies on October 1, 2021, and May 10, 2022, respectively. In total, we found that the Central Bank of Sierra Leone transferred over US$2 million to Cognyte Technologies during the first 12 months following the enactment of Sierra Leone’s new cybersecurity law in 2021. Similarly, we discovered that a total of $2,211,025.72 was concurrently paid to North Star Enterprise for “supplying special public order equipment to the Sierra Leone Police.”
Our investigation revealed that these payments were also processed between January 11, 2022, and July 18, 2022, in multiple amounts ranging from $184,252.14 to $210,573.88. The payments were made in 11 different transactions by banking officials in Sierra Leone. BSL financial records show that all payments to Cognyte and North Star were either routed through Standard Chartered Bank-South Africa (SCB/SAF) or through the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) in New York, and were listed as payments for cyber intelligence services and solutions on behalf of the Sierra Leonean government. Payment documents show that the transactions were directly authorized by the Office of the President and approved by Ministry of Finance.
Further evidence suggests that Sierra Leonean security agencies, including the Office of National Security (ONS) and the Sierra Leone Police, utilized the acquired cyber services and public order equipment for cyber surveillance and other intelligence operations between August 2022 and November 2023, targeting journalists and prominent opposition politicians.
During our investigation, we uncovered evidence linking some private security contractors and cyber intelligence agents hired by Maada Bio to several incidents of state-sponsored violence in Sierra Leone during the same period. These events, including the alleged coup in November 2023, appear to be part of a coordinated effort to silence the regime’s democratic opponents, particularly those in the diaspora.
Several attempts made by Africanist Press to contact Prunedge and Weinthruab representatives for an interview were unsuccessful. Security officers at Cognyte could also not forward numerous telephone calls from Africanist Press to any of the company’s management officials. Africanist Press was also unable to reach Sierra Leone’s National Security Coordinator, Abdulai Caulker, for comment, as calls to his cell phone went unanswered.
In Sierra Leone, the use of foreign agents to coordinate and carry out the Bio regime’s transnational repression and propaganda campaigns is largely shrouded in secrecy. The contracts for hiring foreign agents were never made public and they never followed the mandatory tendering processes required by Sierra Leone’s procurement laws and regulations.
Beyond the legal and human rights violations stemming from these secret arrangements, many Sierra Leoneans are concerned that the covert involvement of U.S.-based Nigerians and other foreign agents in the Bio regime’s transnational repression and propaganda efforts could generate anti-U.S. sentiments both within Sierra Leone and among Sierra Leoneans living abroad.
Many Sierra Leoneans are questioning who introduced Prunedge and other foreign agents into Sierra Leone’s internal politics and external affairs. They are also calling on US authorities to investigate President Bio’s use of foreign agents in his transnational repression on US soil.
This first report is part of an ongoing series from an investigation into the involvement of foreign agents, particularly from Nigeria and U.S. contractors, in the repression and propaganda efforts of the Bio regime.