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A Yaounde -based businessman whose name we got as Christopher Che has paid the sum of 200,000 francs as fine for ‘insulting and threatening’ a custom officer in Bafoussam in the West region of Cameroon.
In a complaint written by Christopher Che, the businessman accuses the custom officer, Wangso Garbele in Bafoussam “…of impounding a truck transporting paints asking for custom clearance of an old car that is matriculated and has been running in the country for several years”.
According to the businessman, the customs officer extorted the sum of two hundred thousand francs for no reason.
In a telephone interview with Mimi Mefo Info Monday, July 20th, 2020, Wangso Garbele, the said customs officers say: “The truck transporting paints and other materials was impounded in Bafoussam on the instruction of my hierarchy. My immediate hierarchy demanded to see original clearing documents of the goods. The owner forwarded the documents on WhatsApp. Then we noticed that there was fraud in one of the documents and we demanded hard copies. It is then that Christopher Che began insulting and threatening me on phone. When I showed the messages to my hierarchy, he decided to fine him to pay 200,000f CFA”.
To the custom officer, the money was paid into the state treasury and a receipt is given to the defaulter on the 10th of July 2020.
Reacting to accusations that he said he hated Anglophones in Cameroon, Wangso Garbele denied such claims stating that he was mainly exercising his duty as a customs officer as demanded by the law and not because the owner of the truck and the paint was an Anglophone.
To him, Christopher Che instead practiced hate speech by questioning why goods of businessmen originating from the West region are not checked but just those of Anglophones.
The customs officer said the truck and goods were released after the payment of a penalty for insult.
To him, they released the goods after the driver signed an undertaken to present the original of the documents within a period of two weeks.
Christopher Che laments that it has become a habit in the West region as custom officers extort money from businessmen transporting goods to the North West region of Cameroon.
Mimi Mefo Info
