An awareness-raising workshop on the Uniform Stock Exchange Offences Act within the West African Monetary Union (UMOA) was held on Monday, November 7, 2022, in Ouagadougou. Organized by the UMOA Financial Markets Authority (AMF-UMOA), the opening ceremony was chaired by the minister in charge of justice, Bibata Nébié.

The private sector and UEMOA member states are increasingly using financial markets to meet the financing needs of their projects. Indeed, since its creation, the UMOA regional financial market has mobilized more than 16 trillion CFA francs, representing an annual average of 500 billion CFA francs. It has made it possible to mobilize 2 trillion CFA over the past three years and by 2022, this threshold could reach 3 trillion FCFA according to estimates by the secretary general of the UMOA Financial Markets Authority (AMF-UMOA), Ripert Bossoukpé.

So, this workshop is being launched with the aim of helping these markets to play their full role and maintain their credibility. According to Bossoukpé, they must be effective and healthy. For this reason, the uniform law on stock exchange offences was adopted by the UMOA Council of Ministers in September 2021. It is a text that makes it effective to punish criminal conduct on the regional financial market by establishing a range of proportionate and dissuasive sanctions.

Furthermore, Bibata Nébié, the Minister of Justice, welcoming the workshop, notified that this workshop allowed legal professionals and market actors to become familiar with the provisions of the uniform law relating to stock exchange offenses.