No, the French are not destroying their vehicles in Mali and Burkina Faso

If you only have a minute…

• Since November 13, 2022, a number of Twitter and Facebook accounts have been sharing a video showing vehicles being destroyed along with captions in English, French and Arabic. Almost all of these social media posts claim that “the French” are behind these demolitions. 
• Some posts claimed that the scene took place in Mali at the end of French military operation Operation Barkhane, while others said that the scene took place at the Perkoa zinc mine in Burkina Faso.
• According to the Burkina Faso Ministry of Energy, Mines and Quarries, the video was filmed at Perkoa Mine, after deadly flooding took place in April 2022.
• The people in the video actually work for Australian company Byrnecut, the subcontractor managing mine exploitation at Perkoa.
• It is impossible at this stage to determine why the vehicles were destroyed. Neither the subcontractors nor the owner of the mine responded to our questions. Official Burkinabe sources said they believed that the vehicles were damaged because they were in poor condition.  

The verification, in detail 

A video has been circulating online, along with a number of different captions. The footage shows two pick-up trucks being destroyed by a bulldozer. Several men wearing work uniforms are present during the scene. “Good job!” someone exclaims from off-camera at the end of the video, likely the person filming. 

Many have said that this scene was filmed in Mali. 

“End of [operation] barcane in mali the french destroy everything that belongs to them instead of taking it  home,” (sic), is the rough translation of this error-ridden Twitter post in French. Since it was posted on November 16, it has garnered more than 6,000 views. 

However, other users say that this video has nothing to do with Operation Barkhane, a French operation launched in 2014 in the Sahel and Sahara regions to fight jihadist groups. French President Emmanuel Macron announced the end of the operation on November 9. 

These accounts agree that the French are the ones destroying these cars, but they say the scene took place in another West African country. 

“The reaction of the French before quitting Burkina Faso: look at the managers of Perkoa mine in Burkina, who are destroying their vehicles before leaving,” reads this Facebook post from November 14, 2022, which has been shared more than 450 times.

This Twitter post in English, which has been retweeted nearly 7,000 times, also claims that the scene took place in Perkoa zinc mine in central Burkina Faso. The mine is not currently in operation. This tweet in Arabic, which was shared more than 5,000 times, also has a similar caption. 

A mine owned by the Canadians and subcontracted to the Australians 

The scene did actually take place at the Perkoa industrial mine, according to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Quarries, which provided information on the case during the Council of Ministers meeting held on November 16, 2022. This statement is included in this summary of the meeting. Burkinabe officials also say they made a hasty visit to the mine on November 13 to “exchange with mine officials”.

The statement also said that the vehicles destroyed belonged to “a subcontractor of Nantou mining company called Byrnetcut SARL company”.

You can also see that the Byrnecut logo is on the trucks.

However, contrary to claims made by numerous posts, the French didn’t run this mine. The Burkinabe government owns 10% of Perkoa Mine, which was opened in 2013, while a Canadian company Trevali Mining owns the other 90%. A branch of Trevali Mining, Nantou Mining, manages the on-the-ground activities.  

However, since 2016, Nantou Mining has itself been using a subcontractor, the Australian company Byrnecut, to develop the mine and oversee the production of zinc. You can read about the mine on Byrnecut’s website.

Our team spoke to Elie Kabore, the publishing director of the website Mines Actu Burkina (Mining News Burkina), who said that the French have no links to this mine. 

“No mine in Burkina Faso is being exploited by the French. The French are involved in many other sectors, including transportation, logistics, oil, explosives … but the mines are run by the Canadians, by Australians and by Russians.”

‘Out of order’ vehicles? 

So why did Byrnecut destroy these vehicles? 

According to the government delegation that visited the mine, the vehicles were destroyed because they were in such bad condition. 

“It turns out that six vehicles were destroyed because of the company’s policy for managing out-of-order vehicles, according to mine officials,” according to the summary of the Council of Ministers meeting previously mentioned.

However, no additional proof was provided to support this hypothesis. 

Our team made multiple attempts to contact the company, but they didn’t want to answer our questions. With an absence of factual information, it is difficult to determine, with certainty, the reasons that these vehicles were destroyed. 

Court-ordered liquidation of the mine

Our team contacted several former employees of Nantou Mining, who also refused to speak as the mine is currently in court-ordered liquidation. 

On October 6, 2022, parent company Trevali Mining did ask for the court-ordered liquidation of its branch Nantou Mining, which was accepted on November 14, 2022, as stated in these press statements. 

“The liquidator has assumed responsibility for the management of the affairs of Nantou Mining and Trevali no longer exercises operational control over Nantou Mining or the Perkoa mine,” it states.

This liquidation follows deadly flooding that took place in April 2022 and led to the closing of the mine. Eight miners were trapped more than 700 feet underground when torrential rain caused flooding in underground passages.  

After the tragedy, the general director of Nantou Mining and the director of operations with Byrnecut Burkina were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in September 2022, and were handed a suspended prison sentence.

Byrnecut was originally contracted to run the mine until 2023, but the contract was ended.

Were these vehicles destroyed to prevent jihadists from using them? 

Another theory also emerged on social media to explain the destruction of these vehicles. Some posts claimed that the company was trying to prevent these vehicles from falling into the hands of jihadist groups. 

“The policy of the mine is to not cede these vehicles because of prior instances when mining vehicles were used in terrorist activity,” according to this Facebook post from November 13, 2022.

However, Elie Kabore, from the news website Mine Actu Burkina, has doubts about this theory. 

“The zone where the jihadists are located is more than 200 kilometres from the Perkoa Mine,” he said. The areas where Islamist extremists are active are in northern Burkina Faso, as shown in these maps published by the newspaper Le Monde on October 4, 2022. The Perkoa mine, however, is located in a relatively safe zone in the centre of the country. 

Kabore said he had never seen a situation like this before and wondered if the destruction of these vehicles was even legal. 

“Mining law stipulates that the material used in mining operations has fiscal advantages in terms of customs, that you pay less tax on them. However, if you benefit from this tax break on your materials, customs requires that the material doesn’t leave the site, that it is only for use there. If the material entered the territory under these rules, which is likely, Byrnecut can’t destroy the vehicles without informing customs.”

The government has launched investigations into the fiscal situation of these vehicles in an effort to understand if the destruction was legal, as stated in the summary of the meeting of the Council of Ministers on November 16, 2022.