FACED with cash shortages that have made him unable to pay pensions, Cote d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo has seized the offices of the regional central bank.
“The agencies of the Central Bank of West African States on the Ivoirien territory, as well as the Ivoirien staff working in those agencies, have been seized on January 25 in order to ensure regular services,” Desire Dallo, Gbagbo’s finance minister, said in a decree read on the Abidjan-based, state- controlled Radio Television Ivoirienne (RTI) yesterday.
According to an online news agency, the order was made after the main offices of the bank in the city received a letter from Charles Koffi Diby, the finance minister of Gbagbo’s rival Alassane Ouattara, ordering it to suspend all operations “We had to pay the pensioners and now this was not possible,” Dallo said in on RTI. “It’s a criminal decision and we can’t accept it.”
The move comes amid attempts by Ouattara to starve him of funds and erode his support base within the country’s military. Ouattara is the internationally recognized winner of the November 28 election. Gbagbo refuses to cede power, alleging electoral fraud in parts of the country’s north.
The seizure is “an abuse of authority aimed at plundering the financial resources of the Ivoirien state,” said Ouattara in an e-mailed statement yesterday. He decided to close the four central bank offices in the south of the country “in order to secure the financial resources of the Ivoirien state,” according to the statement. The decision was taken in agreement with Jean- Baptiste Compaore, acting governor of the bank, it said.
The three remaining offices in the towns of Bouake, Man and Korhogo have been closed since insurgents seized the northern half of the country in a 2002 revolt. The main office in Abidjan was closed today, and surrounded by police and security forces with armored vehicles.
The central bank on December 23 cut off Gbagbo’s access to Cote d’Ivoire account, saying it would only recognize signatories approved by Ouattara. Gbagbo was still able to withdraw up to €150 million ($205.4 million) after the decree, Le Monde reported January 21, citing Ouattara.
Ouattara has told cocoa exporters not to pay taxes to the Gbagbo administration in another bid to cut off funds, sending prices for the beans to their highest since June 25 today. Cocoa for March delivery gained for the seventh straight day, adding £11, or 0.5 per cent, to £2,238 per metric ton by 12:45 p.m. in London.
The financial squeeze comes amid renewed attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s president and the chairman of the African Union, met with the rival presidents yesterday, saying his trip was “to listen to both parties, not to give any lessons.”
Mutharika will consult African Union leaders to “decide what’s best for Ivoiriens,” he told reporters at the Golf Hotel in Abidjan, where Ouattara has been holed up since the election, protected by United Nations peacekeepers and surrounded by the Ivoirien army. The “solution will come from Ivoiriens themselves,” he said.
A delegation from the Economic Community of West African States, including Nigerian Foreign Minister Odein Ajumogobia, will meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington today to brief him on the situation, Nigerian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ozo Nwobu said by phone from Abuja yesterday.
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Gbagbo Siezes Central Bank
Gbagbo Siezes Central Bank
NigerianEye
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Thursday, January 27, 2011
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