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I've read in several Pan-Africanist and conspiracy theory sources (e.g. here and here) that France during the Fifth Republic smuggled in counterfeit Guinean Franc into Guinea in order to destabilize its economy after it gained independence.

I couldn't track this claim down to a reliable source, is there any truth in this?

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    Can you quote the actual claims here? The first link has someone making a claim, the second link has not - it just links to a 46 minutes Youtube video.
    – user22865
    Commented Aug 9, 2019 at 6:11
  • The second link has an actual claim that's just one line long. The proof would presumably be somewhere deep in that video.
    – Avery
    Commented Aug 9, 2019 at 7:30

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Yes, this actually happened, according to French journalists Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop, both of whom were mainstream journalists and specialized in French counterinsurgency and covert operations.

Here is the claim in English, contextualized as part of France's operations against Guinea:

enter image description here

From E. Schmidt, Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958, 171–172.

The citation for the counterfeiting goes to Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop, La Piscine: Les Services Secrets Français, 1944–1984 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1985), 246–47, which I do not have on hand.

edit, 2021: Here is the passage in question.

enter image description here

The quotation seems to be from Col. Tristan Richard, a secret service agent who was confident enough in his own reputation to sue his own subordinate in 1981, claiming defamation.

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