Côte d’Ivoire’s government has approved a draft law creating a hub of specialised economic and financial criminal courts that will add a dedicated appeals court to the existing first-instance tribunal handling such cases, government spokesperson Amadou Coulibaly said after a cabinet meeting held on Wednesday in Abidjan-Plateau.

The hub will comprise the economic and financial criminal division, a specialised first-instance court, and the Economic and Financial Criminal Court of Appeal, which will hear challenges to the first court’s rulings.

“This new structuring of the economic and financial criminal chain extends the specialisation initiative introduced in recent years to better adapt prosecution and trial mechanisms to the particular complexity of economic and financial crime, which is often transnational in nature and calls for demanding investigations,” Coulibaly said.

Until now, only the first instance has been specialised. The economic and financial criminal division (PPEF), set up in January 2020 and made an autonomous court by a law of March 11, 2022, has jurisdiction nationwide and sits in Abidjan. According to its president, Blanche Esso Abanet, it can take cases involving 100 million CFA francs or more, as well as certain customs, tax and banking offences regardless of amount, money laundering and terrorism financing.

Since its creation, the PPEF has handled 1,964 proceedings and issued 819 judgments, she said in early May. About 15 billion CFA francs have been seized from bank accounts since 2022, along with 97 buildings and thousands of vehicles. The prosecutor at the court, Jean Claude Aboya, said in June that more than 1,000 money laundering cases had been opened.

The move comes as Côte d’Ivoire has been on the “grey list” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global anti-money laundering watchdog, since October 2024. Justice Minister Jean Sansan Kambilé said last year that strengthening the PPEF reflected the country’s wish to meet the most demanding international standards. Construction of a new PPEF headquarters in Bingerville, financed by the Treasury at 17.4 billion CFA francs, began in October 2025.