Cameroon’s Wealthiest Individual Deals Major Blow to MTN Cameroon, Freezing Bank Accounts and Forcing Company to Seek Loans.
Baba Ahmadou Danpullo, who is the wealthiest person in Cameroon, has dealt a major setback to MTN Cameroon by taking legal steps that led to the company’s bank accounts being frozen. This unexpected action has made MTN Cameroon need to borrow a lot of money to keep its business running smoothly.
Because of Danpullo’s legal moves that caused MTN Cameroon’s bank accounts to be locked, the big telecommunications company has had a hard time managing its finances and had to look for significant loans to make sure it can continue its operations.
In the first six months of 2023, MTN Cameroon had to borrow a very large amount of money, around $151.8 million, from several banks that were not named. They needed this money to manage their day-to-day expenses and keep the company running smoothly during that time.
This big loan made up almost 98 percent of the money the company used to run itself during that period.
Even though MTN Cameroon did really well in the first part of 2023, making a lot of money (about $258.8 million), having good profit margins, and being the biggest company in the market with more than half of the customers, their money situation got messed up because of a legal problem started by Danpullo.
In 2022, MTN Cameroon didn’t take any new loans and had good money coming in. But things changed a lot by June 2023. They ended up owing FCFA13 billion ($21.6 million) instead of having extra money. This was because of a big legal fight, which caused a lot of problems.
This year, Danpullo claimed that First National Bank (FNB), located in Johannesburg, intentionally took his South African properties and sold them, causing confusion.
Danpullo is claiming that he got a loan of R520 million ($30.6 million) from FNB in 2017 to buy a building in Cape Town. He followed the agreed plan to repay the loan, but in 2020, FNB took and sold his properties worth R4 billion ($235.4 million).
Danpullo’s legal actions have caused problems not just for banks, but also made many people in Cameroon very angry. People there are talking a lot about this in their government meetings. People who work for the community in Cameroon want to protest against South Africa because of this issue. However, Danpullo believes that they can solve this problem by talking to each other instead of fighting.
A court in Cameroon recently gave permission to Danpullo to stop Chococam and MTN, which are connected to the Public Investment Corporation, from using their bank accounts and valuable belongings. The Public Investment Corporation also has ownership in FirstRand Bank, the parent company of FNB.