Fotso determined to get 65 billion from the state of Cameroon

The lawyers of the former major shareholder of the Commercial Bank of Cameroon have seized the arbitration court of the World Bank in April 2015 in order to push the government to compensate their client ejected from the bank's management in 2009.

The conflict between Yves-Michel Fotso and the State of Cameroon under the management of the Commercial Bank of Cameroon (CBC) has taken a new turn after just a month learned from newsducamer.com from the international lawyers of the businessman.

They filed a complaint before ICSID, the arbitration court of the World Bank for violation of the bilateral investment agreement which links Cameroon and the Belgo-Luxembourg Economic Community since 1967.

The case they intend to defend before the judges of the arbitration tribunal ICSID firstly is that the Government of Cameroon, after deciding to remove the management of the bank to the investment group led by Fotso, deliberately sided with Luxembourg, the country of origin of the financial holding company.

They hoped that the arbitrators will respect the terms of the 1967 Treaty, which provide compensation in all cases the parties that breached the terms of the agreement based on the protection of investments by foreigners. Lawyers of Yves Michel Fotso calculated the value of compensation and according to them it is “more than € 100 million” which is a little more than 65 billion CFA francs.

If the origins of the case declined to make some calculations to explain how the advice of the famous businessman reached that figure, then information that the money claimed from the State of Cameroon is especially the financial loss or gain of the holding company headed by Yves-Michel Fotso between the date of the temporary administration of the bank in 2009 and the opening of the procedure.

“But that's not all, says one of the lawyers of the billionaire. He must also recover the original colossal figure investment”, he suggested without going into details.

The other issue was the longevity of the temporary administrator as the head of the CBC. "The fact of placing a bank under provisional administration gave him the bad publicity”, as has been argued by the Fotso camp.

Silence to the Star Building

The procedure for Yves-Michel Fotso before international courts ended in 2013. The last two years, the man who is serving a sentence for embezzlement in the BBJ-2 case tried to precede an arrangement with the government to avoid the prospect of a trial that looked long and tedious - two to three years as informed.

His lawyers claimed with supporting documents, they contacted the prime minister to present the risk a procedure of this kind posed to Cameroon before ICSID. Unfortunately no response was given to them by Philemon Yang services.

Also during the six months that the 1967 convention gave the parties to adjust, nothing was done by the authorities to avoid escalation. On 21 July 2014, YM Fotso sent a Notice of Dispute to the government to consider for the last a ‘conversation’ between both parties.

Still facing the silence of Yaoundé on the issue and deal with the expiration of the legal time in January 2015, the lawyer group resolved to sue the State of Cameroon before ICSID in April with the conviction that international justice permits their client to be compensated for having been deprived of his shares within the CBC Board of Directors; shares which amounted to 46% anyway.