(Ecofin Agency) - The lawyers of the Société Commerciale de Banque Cameroun (SCB Cameroun), subsidiary of the Moroccan banking group Attijariwafa, will bring a case before a Cameroonian court attempting to obtain the invalidation of the decision taken against this bank on 10 July 2015 by the Financial Markets Commission (CMF), the regulatory authority of the Douala marketplace (DSX).

In this decision that “SCB Cameroun is contesting both in form and in content”, explains the bank in an official press release published on 22 July 2015, CMF imposed heavy fines on the organiser of the FCfa 50 billion bond issued by the Cameroonian state in December 2013, an operation which finally allowed the National Treasury to raise FCfa 80 billion.

Indeed, indicated CMF, for bearing responsibility for 30 “violations” during this fundraising operation for the Cameroonian state, SCB was fined FCfa 150 million, subjected to refund an amount of FCfa 473 million to the state of Cameroon, then “suspended for a probationary period of six months from all activity on the local bond issuance market, with the exception of operations strictly necessary to protect the interests of customers”.

Amongst the violations held against SCB Cameroun, the marketplace regulatory authority lists, “practices contrary to its professional duties towards the issuer and the investors”, practices aiming “at distorting the functioning of the market’, “unjustified benefits which would not have been obtained in a normal market”, or “the infringement against the equality of information and treatment of market players”…

It is worth recalling that after the very first bond issuance of the Cameroonian state in 2010 (FCfa 200 billion), CMF had already sanctioned the arranger, Afriland First Bank, as well as the syndicate of financial investors (seven banks) of this public offering, including the Douala Stock Exchange itself. Sanctions which were similarly contested by the victims.