Table of Contents
Cameroonian billionaire Baba Ahmadou Danpullo has won back a court order freezing 140 billion CFA francs ($238.9 million) tied to MTN Cameroon Ltd.'s mobile money business, after the country's Supreme Court overturned a ruling that had suspended it.
The court annulled a suspension granted by the president of the Littoral Court of Appeal in Douala and restored a first-instance judgment that orders Afriland First Bank to keep the money blocked. The bank faces a penalty of 50 million CFA francs ($85,300) for each day it fails to comply. The funds are linked to seizures carried out on the assets of MTN Cameroon and its unit Mobile Money Corporation.
The decision comes on top of a separate Supreme Court ruling on where the case is heard. In that ruling, dated Oct. 28, the court's united chambers took the pending cases away from the courts in Douala, the commercial capital, and sent them to the Ntem High Court and the Court of Appeal of the South region in Ebolowa. Danpullo's Bestinver group had questioned the impartiality of the president of the Littoral appeal court, while MTN had asked for the Wouri High Court in Douala to be removed from the case.
MTN Cameroon declined to comment.
A 2023 order comes back
The freeze goes back to Nov. 16, 2023, when the Douala-Bonanjo Court of First Instance ordered Afriland First Bank to set aside funds held in a pool account through which MTN's mobile money transactions pass. The bank was given the same penalty of 50 million CFA francs a day for any delay. At the time, the sum involved was 126.6 billion CFA francs.
Afriland refused to comply. The bank argued that the balance in the pool account belongs to MTN's mobile money customers, not to MTN or the bank, and that rules on electronic money in the six-nation CEMAC region make such funds immune from seizure. The Bank of Central African States backed that position and warned in 2023 of risks to the financial system. Afriland then secured the suspension from the president of the Littoral appeal court that the Supreme Court has now cancelled.
Mbanzehe Aggee, a lawyer for Danpullo, said the bank should have followed the order first and raised its objections afterward. "They should have complied and told the judge that these sums could not be seized," he said.
Afriland was not the only lender caught up in the case. Ecobank Cameroun, Société Commerciale de Banque Cameroun, United Bank for Africa, Union Bank of Cameroon and BICEC were also ordered to transfer seized funds to an escrow account. SCB moved 899.7 million CFA francs and UBC moved 113.3 million CFA francs, just over 1 billion CFA francs in all.
Cameroon's Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations has also been fighting for custody of the seized money. The state agency argued in June 2023 that the law gives it sole control over sequestered funds, and in late 2025 it sought to recover the escrowed sums from Afriland before suspending enforcement against the mobile money account in December 2025.
Roots in South Africa
The dispute began in South Africa, where FirstRand Ltd.'s First National Bank seized and sold properties belonging to companies linked to Danpullo over a loan. Danpullo has said FNB liquidated R4 billion ($241 million) of his assets to recover R520 million ($31.3 million).
He turned to the courts in Cameroon to recover his losses. In September 2022, his Bestinver companies obtained orders seizing the bank accounts of MTN Cameroon and Chococam, the chocolate maker then owned by Tiger Brands Ltd. Both companies count South Africa's Public Investment Corp. as a shareholder, although neither was a party to the original loan dispute. MTN has always denied owing Bestinver any money.
In February 2025, the Littoral Court of Appeal ordered some of the seizures on MTN and Chococam accounts lifted. Two days later, new seizures were made for a claimed 275.5 billion CFA francs ($470 million).
Danpullo built his fortune in property, telecommunications and cattle ranching. He co-owns Nexttel, Cameroon's third mobile operator, with Vietnam's Viettel Group.
Figures were converted at CFA586 and R16.6 to the dollar.
The intelligence satisfies curiosity. The paid briefings satisfy strategy.
Every Monday, Elite subscribers receive an Investor Memo breaking down the deal, the structure and the positioning behind the week's most consequential African wealth story — the kind of analysis that doesn't appear anywhere else.
Twice a month, a Wealth Intelligence brief profiles a single billionaire's holdings, cash flows and expansion pipeline in detail no public source matches.
→ Executive ($25/mo): Daily newsletter + Deep-Dive Reports
→ Elite ($75/mo): Everything above + Investor Memos + Wealth Intelligence + Quarterly Analyst Briefings
Subscribe now
