Stablecoin issuer / redeemer in Central African Republic

No CEMAC or BEAC instrument addresses stablecoins pegged to the CFA franc; the only regional acts on crypto are Décision COBAC D-2022/071 du 6 mai 2022 barring supervised institutions from crypto exposure, Règlement n° 01/22/CEMAC/UMAC/CM/COSUMAF du 21 juillet 2022 and the COSUMAF Règlement Général of 23 May 2023, none of which creates a parity or reserve rule for stablecoins.

Electronic-money issuers and payment institutions in CEMAC are authorised and prudentially supervised under Règlement n° 04/18/CEMAC/UMAC/COBAC du 21 décembre 2018, with COBAC holding the same control and sanctioning powers over them as over other supervised institutions; BEAC issues no such licence.

Electronic money in CEMAC is issued against receipt of funds under Règlement n° 04/18/CEMAC/UMAC/COBAC du 21 décembre 2018, with COBAC exercising prudential supervision over payment institutions and electronic-money issuers; the instrument cited by the record, Règlement n° 02/18/CEMAC/UMAC/CM, is the foreign-exchange regulation and contains no such rule.

Règlement n° 02/18/CEMAC/UMAC/CM du 21 décembre 2018 is the CEMAC foreign-exchange regulation, portant réglementation des changes dans la CEMAC, in force since 1 March 2019; the instrument governing electronic-money issuance and payment services is Règlement n° 04/18/CEMAC/UMAC/COBAC of the same date.

Reference: Règlement N°02/18/CEMAC/UMAC/CM (Articles 22, 23, 24).

Authorisation of payment institutions and electronic-money issuers in CEMAC rests on Règlement n° 04/18/CEMAC/UMAC/COBAC du 21 décembre 2018 relatif aux services de paiement dans la CEMAC, with prudential norms in Règlement COBAC R-2019/02 du 23 septembre 2019; Règlement n° 02/18/CEMAC/UMAC/CM of the same day is the CEMAC foreign-exchange regulation and contains no e-money authorisation regime.

Reference: Règlement N°02/18/CEMAC/UMAC/CM (Article 20).

No Central African statute called the Sango Act exists; article 4 of Loi n° 22.004 du 22 avril 2022 defines cryptomonnaie as a peer-to-peer digital currency together with blockchain, mining, smart contracts, volatility and traders, and the law creates no category for stablecoins or for virtual assets in the FATF sense.

Article 13 of Loi n° 22.004 du 22 avril 2022 creates the Agence Nationale de Régulation des Transactions Électroniques, and article 17 requires wallet providers and exchange platforms to register with it; there is no National Agency for the Regulation of Cryptocurrencies, no article 9 founding provision and no Sango Act.

Article 14 of Loi n° 22.004 du 22 avril 2022 requires miners to declare their gains in legal currency at the reference rate; the law imposes no reserve or client-asset safeguarding obligation on crypto service providers, and no statute called the Sango Act exists.

Legal Ambiguity: While CAR's Sango Act provides a national framework for "crypto-assets," it often lacks the granular detail expected for payment instruments like stablecoins.

The franc CFA is the sole legal tender across the six CEMAC states under the monetary cooperation convention of 5 July 1996 as amended on 25 June 2008, and the conflict with Central African law ended on 23 March 2023 when the National Assembly removed the obligation to accept cryptocurrency and made bitcoin a reference cryptocurrency rather than an official currency.

Lack of Enforcement and Clarity: The practical implementation and enforcement of CAR's Sango Act, especially in light of BEAC's stance, remain largely untested and unclear. The ANRC's operational capacity and inter-agency coordination with BEAC are critical but largely undefined.

The Central African Republic ended bitcoin's legal-tender treatment on 23 March 2023, when the National Assembly replaced the article 10 obligation to accept cryptocurrency with a freedom to accept or refuse it and reduced bitcoin to a reference cryptocurrency; the country has no national central bank, and BEAC, which issues currency for all six CEMAC states, is developing a digital CFA franc at strict parity with the physical franc.

No CEMAC instrument numbered 04/22/CM/UMAC/CM exists; the CEMAC text governing virtual asset service providers is Règlement n° 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM of 20 December 2024 on the prevention and repression of money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, which defines actif virtuel and prestataire de services sur actifs virtuels at article 2 and lists PSAV among the assujettis at article 6.

COBAC has issued no instruction numbered 001/GR/2023 and none dated 31 January 2023; COBAC numbers its instructions in the form Instruction COBAC I-YYYY/NN, its published register ends at Instruction COBAC I-2018/01, and its only virtual-asset instrument is Décision COBAC D-2022/071 of 6 May 2022 on the holding, use, exchange and conversion of cryptocurrencies by COBAC-supervised institutions.

Article 42 of Règlement n° 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM sets the occasional-transaction threshold for virtual asset service providers at 500 000 FCFA, above which reinforced customer due diligence applies; the CEMAC framework states the threshold in FCFA and not as EUR 1 000.

Evidence fact cf.aml.collect-and-retain-the-following not found (may have been renamed).

Article 42 of Règlement n° 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM requires the originating virtual asset service provider to transmit the required originator information to the beneficiary virtual asset service provider immediately and in a secure manner.

Article 39 of Règlement n° 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM requires assujettis, including virtual asset service providers, to retain customer identity documents, transaction records and related material for a minimum of ten years from account closure or the end of the business relationship, not five years.

The Central African Republic's cryptocurrency statute is Loi n° 22.004 du 22 avril 2022 régissant la cryptomonnaie en République Centrafricaine, adopted by the National Assembly on 22 April 2022 and promulgated later that month; no Loi n° 22.006 of 27 April 2022 governs cryptocurrency.

The Central African Republic operates no national virtual-asset licensing or supervision and its land-tokenisation platform requires only an email address and a crypto payment with no identity verification, while Règlement n° 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM art. 42 and the COSUMAF Règlement Général of 23 May 2023 impose prior authorisation duties that Bangui has not implemented.

No Règlement n° 01/17/CEMAC/UMAC/CM of 30 March 2017 exists; CEMAC AML/CFT law ran from Règlement n° 01/03-CEMAC-UMAC of 4 April 2003 through Règlement n° 02/10 of 2 October 2010 and Règlement n° 01/CEMAC/UMAC/CM of 11 April 2016 to Règlement n° 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM of 20 December 2024, each adopted by the UMAC Comité Ministériel rather than by BEAC.

Evidence fact cf.licensing.identification-and-verification not found (may have been renamed).

Virtual-asset service providers operating in the Central African Republic are assujettis under article 6 of Règlement n° 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM and must file suspicious-transaction reports with the Agence Nationale d'Investigation Financière under article 105, whatever the amount involved.

The Central African Republic's financial intelligence unit is the Agence Nationale d'Investigation Financière (ANIF), created on 22 February 2005 and juridically operational from 3 December 2008; CENTIF is the UEMOA designation and no CEMAC state uses it.

The Central African tax treatment of crypto rests on Loi n° 22.004 du 22 avril 2022 itself, whose article 8 exempts cryptocurrency exchanges from tax, article 16 taxes the trader's profit and article 7 permits payment of tax in cryptocurrency through State-recognised platforms; the Code général des impôts published by the Ministry of Finance carries no provision on digital assets.