Article 5 of the OHADA Treaty provides that Uniform Acts may provide for criminal sanction provisions, with each State Party being called upon to determine the corresponding sanctions. Thus, there are incriminating provisions in the Uniform Act on General Commercial Law, the Uniform Act on Commercial Companies and Economic Interest Groups, the Uniform Act on Cooperative Societies, the Uniform Act on Collective Proceedings for Clearing Debts and the Uniform Act on Accounting Law and Financial Reporting.

Since the beginning of the current year, two OHADA member countries have, when updating their penal codes, aligned their criminal provisions with the OHADA Law. By Law No. 2017-10 of March 2017, amending and supplementing Law No. 61-27 of 15 July 1961 on the Penal Code, Niger provided in Part IV-bis, starting from Article 377.1 to 377.43, for sanctions relating to offences under the OHADA Law. More recently, and by its Law No. 01 on the Penal Code promulgated on 8 May 2017, Chad also inserted Book 7, Articles 473 to 517, in its new Penal Code which deals with penalties applicable to offences provided for in OHADA Uniform Acts.

Niger and Chad thus join the list of States which have already put their domestic criminal law in line with OHADA Uniform Acts, namely Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Guinea and Senegal.

The Permanent Secretary of OHADA welcomes this development and urges other States to take the complementary internal texts on the incriminations contained in the Uniform Acts, drawing upon the model law provided for this purpose, if need be.

The Permanent Secretary,
Prof. Dorothé C. SOSSA

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