Dakar, spring 2021. In his sumptuous villa on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, the architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa is having lunch with his friend Frank Timis, an Australian-Romanian entrepreneur. The two men have known each other for almost twenty years. "If it were up to me, Frank, there'd be a statue of you on the corniche," jokes Atepa. The latter, who is a former special adviser to ex-president Abdoulaye Wade, has never made a secret of his closeness to Timis, whom he helped network his way