Commercial Court Jurisdiction: ECOBANK Status Insufficient

This is the reasoning adopted by the CCJA in its ruling n° 010/2022 of January 27, 2022, ECOBANK Côte d’Ivoire SA v. the Ivorian State. In this case, current accounts had been opened by ECOBANK Côte d’Ivoire on behalf of suppliers to the school canteen program, a structure of the national education system, which had undertaken to transfer invoice payments to those accounts. However, while ECOBANK was expecting to receive credit transactions on these accounts, the account holders instead assigned their receivables to ECOBANK, and these assignments were notified to the State of Côte d’Ivoire as the assigned debtor. In the absence of amicable payment and after several reminders, ECOBANK summoned the State of Côte d’Ivoire before the Commercial Court, which ruled in its favor, while the Commercial Court of Appeal, on the State’s appeal, overturned this judgment.

Two main arguments were raised by ECOBANK in support of its appeal before the CCJA. On the one hand, the State, as the assigned debtor, had accepted that the disputed receivable was a commercial claim and not a claim arising from the performance of a public contract. Consequently, ECOBANK, acting as assignee, had performed a commercial act, so that the Commercial Court had jurisdiction. On the other hand, the mere fact that the State was the debtor of an assigned claim could not make the assignee a party to a procurement contract; moreover, the State of Côte d’Ivoire had not entered into any public procurement contracts with the bank…

The CCJA therefore concluded that: “the contracts at issue were entered into by the Directorate of School Canteens, a department attached to the Ministry of National Education, in order to meet its supply needs; that these contracts, concluded in writing for consideration with natural and legal persons, constitute public procurement contracts; that although the receivables arising therefrom were assigned to ECOBANK, this does not alter their original nature, namely receivables arising from the performance of a public procurement contract; that pursuant to the Public Procurement Code, disputes arising from the performance of a public procurement contract fall within the jurisdiction of the courts competent to hear disputes concerning administrative contracts.”

CCJA – Ruling n° 010/2022 of January 27, 2022