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Africa Subsaharan
Ivory Coast's Gbagbo seizes 4 international banks
2011-02-19
[Pak Daily Times] Ivory Coast's incumbent leader has seized four major international banks that had shut down operations this week in the West African country, a government front man said.

The front man for the sitting president Laurent Gbagbo read a decree on state TV late Thursday saying that the banks did not respect the law and closed without proper notice. According to Ivorian law banks have to give three months notice.
Dummy. It's not like Citibank keeps a lot of cash at its Abidjan branch. All this does is turn the international bankers against him, and that's never a good idea for a dictator.
Ahoua Don Mello said the government had taken over the offices for Britain's Standard Chartered, La Belle France's BNP-Paribas and Societe Generale along with US bank Citibank. These banks hold a majority of the bank accounts for civil servants.

Gbagbo's government would nationalize the banks and would pay February salaries, Don Mello said. It is unclear, however, if Gbagbo will have access to the banks' funds.
It's perfect clear: he won't. Societe Generale isn't stupid.
Both Societe Generale and BNP-Paribas declined immediate comment on Friday. Nine private banks began shutting down earlier this week including Nigeria's Access bank. La Belle France's Societe Generale, the country's largest financial institution, announced it was shuttering all 47 branches of its local subsidiary serving 230,000 clients.

The international community had said it would use financial sanctions to dislodge Gbagbo, who is refusing to step down although results issued by his country's election commission and certified by the United Nations, aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society showed he had lost the Nov. 28 ballot by nearly 9 percentage points. Among the sanctions slapped on Gbagbo's regime was the revocation of his signature on state accounts at the regional central bank which prints the currency used in Ivory Coast.
Posted by:Fred

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