CEMAC faces international discredit over CDEC/COBAC dispute, warns CDEC Director General
via Gabon Review16 min read
A long-standing dispute between Cameroon's Caisse des d茅p么ts et consignations CDEC and the Central African Banking Commission COBAC has escalated from technocratic meetings to academic debate. The conflict centers on COBAC's claim to organize and supervise the sovereign public service of deposits and consignments, a claim solidified by two regulations adopted in July 2025. Richard Evina Obam, Director General of CDEC, offers a legal perspective, countering political scientist Guy Mvelle's concerns about Cameroon's international isolation. Obam argues that COBAC's actions ignore the principle of attribution, disrupt the hierarchy of norms, disregard the principle of parallelism of forms, and incorrectly classify dormant assets as banking operations. He warns that the issue extends beyond Cameroon, potentially discrediting the entire CEMAC region internationally. Obam highlights several critical legal violations. First, he asserts a flagrant violation of the principle of attribution in community law, stating that CEMAC's primary legal texts do not transfer the sovereign public service of deposits and consignments to the community. Second, he points to a manifest transgression of the primacy of primary law over derived law, citing two COBAC-initiated regulations adopted in July 2025 that he claims violate established competency rules. Third, he identifies a serious infringement of the principle of parallelism of forms, arguing that COBAC is attempting to unilaterally modify Arti
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