ABIDJAN, (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s incumbent Laurent Gbagbo decreed yesterday that major banks suspending business in Ivory Coast are to be nationalised, the latest turn in a bitter struggle for political control of the West African state.
The banking system of the world’s top cocoa grower has been heading towards total collapse this week, with virtually all commercial banks shut and others swamped by customers trying to withdraw savings. The closures are the consequence of an international sanctions effort to squeeze Gbagbo of funds and force him to stand down after UN-certified results of a Nov. 28 election showed his rival Alassane Ouattara the winner. “President Laurent Gbagbo … has made a decree that the Ivorian state take control, via a total and complete stakeholding in the capital of these banks,” a statement issued after a cabinet meeting said.
The statement referred to the country’s biggest bank, a unit of France’s Societe Generale <SOGN.PA>, which suspended business yesterday as part of an exodus of foreign banks that turned political crisis into financial meltdown.
