Ivory Coast Seeks €10 Million From Banks After Audit Finds Irregular Fees

A government audit has uncovered more than €10 million in allegedly irregular banking charges imposed on Ivory Coast’s state-owned enterprises, a finding that is forcing one of West Africa’s fastest-growing economies to confront an uncomfortable question: how much money can disappear in plain sight when the institutions responsible for oversight lack the capacity to scrutinize every transaction? The disputed fees, which auditors say ranged from unauthorized commissions to unexplained deductions that bore no relation to contractual agreements, may represent only a fraction of the broader governance challenge facing a country that has spent the past decade positioning itself as a regional financial powerhouse. While Abidjan has become home to the headquarters of the West African Economic and Monetary Union’s central bank, attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment, and posted some of the strongest growth rates on the continent, the audit suggests that economic expansion has not necessarily been matched by equivalent improvements in accountability. The revelation comes at a particularly sensitive moment. Ivory Coast remains under increased international scrutiny over anti-money-laundering controls, was added to the European Union’s list of high-risk jurisdictions for money laundering and terrorist financing in 2025, and continues to implement reforms required under the Financial Action Task Force’s monitoring framework.

At first glance, the line items looked unremarkable: routine service fees, commission charges, account management costs buried inside the quarterly statements of government-linked companies in Ivory Coast. 

But when state auditors began examining the books in detail, the picture that emerged was anything but routine. Across multiple state-owned enterprises, the same banks had applied charges that had no contractual basis, no regulatory authorisation, and in several cases, no explanation at all.

The result, according to officials, was a formal demand that the banks return more than €10 million in fees deemed irregular, representing one of the most significant accountability actions taken against the country’s banking sector in recent memory. 

The push has drawn intense attention inside Abidjan’s financial district, the bustling Plateau neighbourhood where multinational lenders and regional heavyweights share glass towers overlooking the Ebrié Lagoon, and where the relationship between government money and private banks has long been more entangled than the contracts suggest.

The Audit and What It Found

The investigation was conducted under the auspices of Ivory Coast’s public financial oversight apparatus, which includes the Inspection Generale des Finances (IGF) and the Cour des Comptes (Court of Auditors). The Court, based in Abidjan’s Cocody Angre district and inaugurated in a newly expanded facility in November 2024, is mandated by Ivorian law to control the management of public enterprises and any organisation that benefits from state financial support.

According to officials briefed on the findings, auditors cross-referenced the banking contracts of several state enterprises against the fees actually applied to their accounts.

In case after case, they found discrepancies: charges applied above the contractually agreed rate, fees for services that had not been requested, and in some instances, recurring deductions whose basis could not be explained by the banks when queried. The aggregate sum identified for potential recovery surpassed €10 million, equivalent to roughly 6.55 billion West African CFA francs at the fixed WAEMU exchange rate.

The IGF, which in recent years has broadened its mandate to include audits of financial transactions across government-linked bodies, including the oil sector and externally financed project units, did not make the full findings public. But the demands transmitted to the implicated lenders, and the government’s subsequent engagement with bank management, have circulated among senior finance officials and business leaders in the capital.

A Pattern Familiar to African State Enterprises

The allegations fit a pattern documented by financial analysts across sub-Saharan Africa, where state-owned enterprises frequently lack the financial management capacity to monitor every line of a bank statement with sufficient rigour. Large, captive accounts held by government-linked companies are attractive clients for commercial banks, and without robust internal audit functions, irregular fees can go unchallenged for years.

As of early 2025, Ivory Coast operates 87 state-linked companies, spanning sectors from oil refining and public transport to telecommunications and aviation. The government holds a 49 percent stake in the SIR refinery, 60 percent of the public transport firm, 98 percent of the national broadcaster RTI, and 58 percent of Air Cote d’Ivoire. Each entity maintains accounts across multiple commercial banks, generating substantial fee income for those lenders.

In the Ivorian context, the stakes are heightened by the scale of the banking sector. Abidjan is the financial capital of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), and the city hosts the headquarters of the regional central bank, the Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO), as well as the Banking Commission of the West African Monetary Union, the single banking supervisor for eight WAEMU member states. The BCEAO reported more than 30 banks operating in Ivory Coast as of end-2020, with the total number of bank branches having more than doubled, from 324 in 2010 to 725 by 2019.

Ivory Coast’s banking sector is governed by a 10 percent cumulative tax on banking operations charged to companies, according to PwC analysis of the Ivorian tax framework. Foreign banks operating in the country pay an 18 percent tax on loan interest. These layered costs mean that the line between legitimate charges and irregular ones is not always transparent to corporate clients.

Governance Under Scrutiny

The push for repayment comes as Ivory Coast is navigating significant international financial scrutiny. In June 2025, the European Union added Ivory Coast to its list of high-risk jurisdictions for money laundering and terrorism financing. The designation, which follows a 2023 IMF assessment that found the country had ‘failed to demonstrate a detailed understanding of ML and TF methods used in practice,’ has added urgency to the government’s efforts to demonstrate financial discipline.

As of February 2026, Ivory Coast remains on the FATF grey list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, requiring continued action on risk-based supervision of financial institutions, improved use of financial intelligence by law enforcement, and a demonstrable increase in money laundering prosecutions. The government has committed to an action plan addressing these deficiencies.

The European Parliament, reviewing the EU listing, acknowledged in a 2025 resolution that ‘lower-income countries continue to be disproportionately affected by the Union listing of high-risk third countries, even in cases where they have demonstrated measurable progress,’ and noted that Ivory Coast’s shortcomings were ‘often the result of administrative and institutional capacity constraints linked to limited resources, rather than a reflection of the jurisdiction’s actual role in facilitating money laundering.’

That geopolitical nuance has not lessened the domestic pressure on financial institutions to operate transparently. The government’s National Development Plan 2025-2030 explicitly commits to digitising government records and processes for a more transparent and inclusive economy. Holding banks accountable for irregular charges sits directly within that framework.

The Banks and the Negotiations

None of the banks named in the audit’s internal findings have publicly responded to the repayment demands. The Ivory Coast banking sector includes 28 commercial lenders, according to the Banking Commission of the WAEMU, ranging from pan-African lenders such as Ecobank and United Bank for Africa to European-linked institutions like Standard Chartered and regional champions including NSIA Banque, Societe Ivoirienne de Banque, and Societe Generale Cote d’Ivoire.

Officials familiar with the talks say some lenders have agreed in principle to partial restitution, while others have contested the audit’s methodology or argued that certain disputed charges fall within permissible discretionary pricing. The negotiations, conducted outside public view, have involved the Ministry of Finance and officials from the state enterprises themselves.

This is not the first time Ivorian banks have been drawn into a complex dispute with state actors over fees and repayment processes. In 2017, two banks, BOA and Orabank, challenged the government before the Tribunal de Commerce in Abidjan over a separate state-mandated repayment process involving agribusiness investment funds. 

That dispute, in which the banks sought greater legal security before processing payments, ultimately slowed the entire reimbursement process for ordinary citizens, illustrating how banking-state disputes in Ivory Coast can carry significant downstream consequences.

Economic Growth Has Not Closed the Governance Gap

The episode arrives as Ivory Coast is performing at the top of African economic league tables, but struggling to ensure that growth yields institutional improvements at pace. The IMF projects 6.4 percent GDP growth for 2026, placing it among Africa’s top 10 performers. Oil major ENI announced the Calao South gas field discovery in February 2026, and Australian miner Resolute committed up to $190 million to the Doropo Gold Project.

The Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres (BRVM), the regional stock exchange headquartered in Abidjan, closed 2024 at a record CFA 20.6 trillion francs (approximately $36 billion) in total listed value, up from CFA 18.3 billion the previous year. Ivory Coast alone accounted for four of the top companies in the West Africa edition of the African Business Top 250 rankings for 2025.

Yet the U.S. State Department’s 2025 Investment Climate Statement for Ivory Coast, published in August 2025, noted that while the government has begun a process of divestiture for some SOEs, ‘some public banks have large numbers of nonperforming loans,’ and the country’s financial oversight bodies remain under-resourced relative to the scale of the economy they are meant to supervise. ‘Both foreign and Ivoirian businesses often complain about the government’s slow communication,’ the statement observed, a critique that applies equally to the audit process itself.

Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index continues to flag weak anti-corruption measures in Ivory Coast as a structural concern. In sub-Saharan Africa broadly, the organisation has found that corruption undermines the ‘crucial enablers of progress, including democracy, security and development.’

What Comes Next

The broader significance of the audit extends beyond the €10 million figure. If the state successfully compels full repayment, it will establish a meaningful precedent: that public enterprises in Ivory Coast have both the legal standing and the institutional will to challenge banks over opaque fee practices. That precedent would carry weight across the WAEMU region, where similar dynamics play out in Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso, all of which share the same regional banking supervisor.

In May 2026, the African Development Bank organised a workshop in Abidjan focused on strengthening audit standards for bank-financed projects, bringing together financial management experts, chartered accountants, and officials from Ivory Coast’s National Financial Control Directorate. The Bank’s Sekou Keita, head of its Financial Management Division, told participants that ‘the aim is to improve the quality of audits submitted to the Bank and to identify potential bottlenecks in the auditor recruitment process,’ flagging shortcomings in audit reports submitted in recent years.

Meanwhile, under the 2026 Finance Act signed into law in late 2025, Ivory Coast’s government has signalled its intent to deepen financial sector reforms, introducing new tax frameworks for digital startups and seeking to position the country as a hub for financial innovation. 

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