Dispute between the Foreign Exchange: Office and the CMT Mining Company’s first victory

A  dramatic turn of events has taken place in the standoff between the Foreign Exchange Office and the Compagnie Minière de Touissit (CMT). The company has just won the first round of proceedings before the Casablanca Criminal Court of First Instance in the dispute between it and the Foreign Exchange Office. Legal proceedings are in force under the provisions of the Royal Decree (“Dahir”) of 30 August 1949 relating to the punishment of violations of foreign exchange regulations.

Irregular Operations 

To date, no information has been published on this subject either by the foreign exchange regulator or by the company, which is so quick to issue press releases at each of the twists and turns of this legal case. Questioned by L’Economiste, the Foreign Exchange Office confirmed that a first judgment in absentia had been rendered on October 15, 2024 in favor of the Customs administration, sentencing CMT  company to a fine of 827,787,819.18 Dirhams (US 90,728,365), as well as a six-month suspended prison sentence against its chairman and CEO, Luc Gérard Nyafé, CMT subsequently filed an appeal. The appeal was accepted by the Casablanca Criminal Court, which issued a judgment annulling the initial decision and ruling in favor of the opposing party. «In accordance with the legal channels, the Foreign Exchange Office, in coordination with the Customs and Indirect Tax Administration, has filed an appeal. The case is currently waiting to be judged by a court of second instance « , the Office explained. For its part, CMT did not respond to questions from L’Economiste. 
To understand the background to this twisty affair, it is important to remember that following an inspection carried out by inspectors from the Foreign Exchange Office, the Touissit mining company was accused of carrying out irregular operations such as transferring profits abroad of more than 376 million Dirhams (USD 41 million) in violation of foreign exchange regulations. This is punishable by a fine of up to 2 billion Dirhams (USD 219 million), i.e. five times the equivalent of the corpus delicti (Royal Decree (“Dahir”) of 30 August 1949), increased by the amount of the offense.
Hence the activation by customs of a precautionary seizure on the company’s business assets as a guarantee for payment of the amount in dispute. The case was then brought before the courts by the company. In an initial stage, the public prosecutor, after investigation and review of the case, had ruled that only one transaction carried out by CMT could be considered irregular. It involved exactly 5,110,626.90 Dirhams (USD 560,083.38). 
Consequently, if the court was to definitively confirm the illegal nature of the transaction, the amount of the fine would be approximately 30 million Dirhams (USD 3 million). But now CMT has been cleared after an initial judgment. It remains to be seen what the outcome of the appeal filed by the Foreign Exchange Office through customs would be.

Hassan EL ARIF