Adapted from the Introduction to my book Chasing Black Unicorns.
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It was January 14th, 2018 and my holiday was coming to an end. I had spent the last five years mainly on planes and in places such as Lagos, Accra, Johannesburg or Nairobi. I was one of the founders of Jovago.com, the largest hotel booking website in Africa, which eventually merged with Jumia.com, currently known as “the Amazon.com of Africa”, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange. My subsequent companies, HotelOga and HotelOnline, developed software for hotels and facilitated the expansion of players such as Expedia and Booking.com on the African continent.
During all these years, I managed to avoid the “African bad PR”: terrorists, kidnappers, corrupt politicians, high-ranking officials and unscrupulous competitors. I was really lucky and, by my own example, improved the statistics related to doing business in Africa and dispelled stereotypes around this topic. However, it was right then that the statistics decided to catch up with me.
A meeting in London
On January 14th, I was flying from Warsaw to London for a meeting with the directors of an investment fund. I was supposed to negotiate its involvement in my next ventures. To be frank, I was supposed to ask a few bankers in expensive suits for their money. Actually, it wasn’t their money at all but that which had been invested in their fund. Guys in expensive suits had always made an impression on me until I discovered that they really work for other guys in T-shirts. That is the beauty of the financial markets.
1.30 pm – The Uber dropped me off at the airport exactly two hours before my departure. I was with my life partner, Yaritza. Her plane to Brussels was to take off a short while earlier and I intended to accompany her right to the gate. As we had already checked in online, all I had to do was go with my hand luggage through the security check and passport control. So, for the moment, I suppressed my romantic notions concerning the equality of all mankind and used my business cards filled to the hilt with air miles to save some time in the priority queue, meaning the queue in which those who thought they were a cut above the rest stood.
2.45 pm – Yaritza was sitting safely in the plane. Brussels, just as Warsaw, lay in the Schengen Zone, which makes travelling so much easier, a fact we frequently take for granted. The journey to London, however, required that the Polish Border Guard check my documents. So I stood there on my best behavior in front of a politely smiling lady in a border guard uniform and handed over my passport.
2.49 pm – As my mind was otherwise occupied, I didn’t notice that I had been standing at the window quite a while. The queues on either side of me were moving along nicely while the lady from the border guard stared intently at the monitor and made a phone call. The smile then disappeared from her face.
2.51 pm – Suddenly, two border guard officers appeared alongside and directed me to leave the queue. They did not respond to any questions while they were leading me to the rear of the terminal.
A room without door handles
The secluded room in which I found myself was less than four square meters in area and had no windows or door handles. The gentlemen from the border guard had not taken my bags, however. That’s a good sign, I thought. Surely it’s all a misunderstanding, probably something wrong with my passport. Those issued abroad are often considered a bit suspicious. The guards told me as they were leaving that someone would be along shortly. I asked them to inform the airline that I could be delayed for my flight, a request which visibly amused them. In any case, I rang my lawyer and assistant and gave them an account of what had happened.
3.05 pm – Three new uniformed border guards arrived. Bigger and less friendly looking than the previous ones. As they took my watch and personal effects, this was the last time I was able to record the chronology of events so precisely. When they informed me that I was being arrested and would be placed in custody in the notorious Mokotów Prison in Warsaw, I broke out in a cold sweat. I was put in handcuffs and led outside through the terminal, no doubt becoming the biggest attraction for any passengers travelling through Frederic Chopin Airport that day.
A Red Notice
I managed to get it out of one of the guards that, as far as he knew, I was being sought by the government of Nigeria, which was accusing me of “large scale financial fraud”. A crime for which, according to the local law, one can get anything between seven and twenty-one years in jail. In a Nigerian prison.
All I knew was that my arrest had been caused by a Red Notice, the fugitive category with the highest level of threat on the Interpol list, issued on behalf of a government seeking a particular criminal. Although it is designed to be used for catching terrorists, murderers and drug barons, it is also used to target business rivals and political enemies, as Interpol’s members also include such democratic and incorrupt countries as China, Iran, Russia or Turkey.
I had absolutely no idea what would become of me, nor any knowledge of what the procedures looked like in such a situation. Up to then, my greatest crime had been breaking the speed limit in an urban area. I was gripped by the fear of whether I would ever see my family and loved ones again, and whether I would survive time in a Nigerian prison. Built during the colonial period, they were crowded with ten times more inmates than they had been designed for. Instead of running water and electricity, they had rats, insects and an internal prison hierarchy, and if some disease didn’t get me first, I was already imagining the leaders of the groups there deciding what to do with the new arrival.
The January sun had already set when I was taken off to prison and directed into a cell. It was only the following day that I was to stand in front of a state prosecutor and find out anything whatsoever about my fate. The prison guard was as clueless as I was about what could happen to me.
“As far as I know, you can even be put on the first plane to Nigeria tomorrow,” he said, and closed the cell door.
That first night in prison, after countless panic attacks, attempts to meditate, uncontrolled weeping, push-ups, praying to all the gods I could think of, and walking around in circles, I was finally able to calm down and pull myself together. I had no clue how or when I would do it, but I swore to myself that I would get out of this mess alive and well. And that I would share my story.
This is from the Introduction to Chasing Black Unicorns: How building the Amazon of Africa put me on Interpol’s Most Wanted list. How I got out, and how I ended up there in the first place, is told in the rest of the book. All of my income from the book goes to the MaYa Foundation.
Listen to this chapter: Polish audiobook on YouTube (English version coming soon) · Spotify
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