DAKAR, Senegal — Thione Ballago Seck’s high tenor croon has floated into Senegalese ears for generations, and his mournful Afro-Cuban rhythms and deep Muslim faith have powered a renowned career as a West African musical icon in this music-infused land.
But when the police came for him at his multistory marble-paneled home here a few weeks ago, passing the framed photos of Senegal’s presidents smiling at him, panic struck Mr. Seck, the authorities said.
He rushed toward a large gray sack stuffed with bank notes in his living room, the police said. Mr. Seck then sat on it, because he did not want the police officers to know its contents: 50 million in counterfeit euro notes, officials said. He got up only after “fierce exhortations” from the officers, according to their report.
Since then the tall, dignified singer, sometimes considered Senegal’s second-ranking music star after Youssou N’Dour, has been sitting in the V.I.P. wing of a Dakar prison, accused of being part of an ambitious, if rough-hewed, counterfeit scheme.
A beloved prince of the jagged and dramatic mbalax style, Mr. Seck’s most famous album is “The Power of a Pure Heart,” and his home’s soaring entrance hall is adorned with portraits of Senegal’s religious heroes.
The scion of a family of griots, or traditional praise-singers, Mr. Seck was once a lead singer in Dakar’s legendary Orchestra Baobab, which fused African and Latin styles against a backdrop of wailing saxophones.
But more recently, the police said, Mr. Seck’s taste for high living and fancy cars drove him into the embrace of forgers who produced bank notes in a Dakar living room.
The sudden downfall of Mr. Seck, 60, has not left the headlines here for weeks, “piercing the serenity of the coldest souls,” wrote L’Observateur, a daily. He has been visited by legions of dumbfounded music stars, politicians, government officials, businessmen and hangers-on.
On the streets of Dakar, his fans are bitterly disappointed.
“We listened to him; we heard his words,” said Amadou Ba, a mechanic, sheltering from the midday sun in the Ouakam neighborhood. “He himself sang: ‘You should never do this, never do that. Don’t do bad things.’ Everyone respected him. We followed him. What he was counseling, did he apply it?”
Kharma Matar, a retired telephone operator, said: “A singer like that, he’s a speaker of truth. He counsels people. He shouldn’t make mistakes.”
Senegal’s newspapers have been filled with lamentations as fraught as the star’s songs. “Cries echoed everywhere. Tears broke the electric silence at the Dakar Criminal Court’s entrance,” began an article on his transfer to prison in L’Observateur.
There has been soul-searching about the Senegalese hybrid of flashy nightclub culture and superstar singers grafted onto a land of deep Muslim piety. And there have been mutterings of influence-peddling on behalf of the celebrity prisoner.
“The police investigators and the magistrates are being assaulted with every sort of pressure to cover up this affair,” a columnist in the daily Le Quotidien wrote recently. “Members of government, and members of the president’s cabinet, with no regard for the sacredness of their duties or respect for the principles of the Republic, have even been down to Police Headquarters to try to extract Thione Seck from prison.”
In his Dakar office, the chief police investigator on the case, Cmdr. Issa Diack, acknowledged the intense public interest but otherwise declined to comment.
The police report, leaked to Le Quotidien, contains a number of potentially damning details. On May 27, the police said, they saw “a professional forger” chatting with Mr. Seck outside his house.
After arresting the forgery suspect, Alaye Djiteyi, the police went to his apartment, where they found phony euro notes and a “laboratory” for producing them. Mr. Djiteyi offered a $6,000 bribe, but it was no deal.
He then admitted “being the owner of the laboratory where he scanned euro and dollar notes for his clients, in exchange for cash” in the local currency. Phone records revealed calls between him and Mr. Seck, according to the police report.
For Mr. Seck’s lead lawyer — an army of Senegalese celebrity lawyers has sprung up to defend him — the cause of the singer’s downfall is clear: He was exploited by crooks with mystical powers who seduced him with false promises of an extensive European tour.
“These sorts of things always occur because of mystical manipulations,” said the lawyer, Abdou Dialy Kane, pacing in Dakar’s clamorous Criminal Courts Building. “When I discussed it with his family, this mystic element was clear.”
Mr. Seck himself told the investigators that the mountain of cash in his living room was merely an advance for the “105 concerts” the phony promoters had promised, according to the police report. He was “desperate” when the police came, so he sat on the sack, he told investigators.
The singer’s adopted son, while saying that his “naïve” father was “the victim of a gang of swindlers,” also suggested that magic was part of the equation.
“We’re in Senegal,” the son, Ibrahim Pipo Diop, said at his father’s house. “Maraboutage” — a local term connoting the bewitching influence of the marabout, or holy man — “still exists,” he added. “It is still there.”
That explanation found a strong echo on the streets.
“Maybe it’s magic,” said Abdoulaye Kan, a real estate counselor in Ouakam. “This is how magicians operate.”
But Mr. Kan also expressed a glum feeling of betrayal. “Thione Seck is someone we have been listening to from a very young age,” he said sadly.
Back at the courthouse, Mr. Kane, the lawyer, made a plea for human weakness. “Whatever one’s human values, one can be in conflict with the law,” Mr. Kane said. “As Victor Hugo said, all great men have their failing.”
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