1000 Francs CFA Viktor Tsoy

Viktor Tsoy, the Soviet rock musician who led the band Kino, died in a car accident in Latvia in August 1990 — just months before the USSR collapsed. His cult status never faded in post-Soviet Russia and Central Asia, where fans still leave flowers and cigarettes at a memorial wall in Moscow. Benin's commemorative program through the Monnaie de Paris has issued dozens of gold-plated silver pieces honoring musicians, athletes, and cultural figures with no connection to the issuing territory whatsoever, making the country's nominal authorship essentially a licensing arrangement rather than a sovereign statement.