Petroleum products in Cameroon: 17,240 litres of smuggled fuel seized in the Adamawa, East and Centre regions

The Minister of Water and Energy, Gaston ELOUNDOU ESSOMBA, firmly maintains his determination and commitment to continue fighting against fraud and the illicit sale of petroleum products throughout the national territory.

As a means to combat these scourges, from 31 March to 2 April 2023, Sworn-in inspectors from the Brigade for the Fight against Fraud in Petroleum Products of MINEE, in conjunction with law enforcement officers, carried out Operation “Punch” in the Adamawa, East, and Centre regions.

The team left Yaounde on Friday, 31 March 2023 at 7:00am. After a long journey, they made their first stop to have some refreshments at the Total filling station in Mandjou, located in the East region.

Following a quick inspection, the employees of the said station were caught red-handed selling gasoil to a company in a cubitainer placed in a pick-up truck. A small dispute arose but the product was seized and seals were put on all the gasoil pumps of the filling station.

The mission then headed for the locality of Meiganga where it arrived at 2am on 1 April 2023. Once the security arrangements were put in place, a systematic search of the shops was done.

The strategy put in place by MINEE inspectors helped to discover that the traffickers had hidden drums containing petroleum products at the bottom of a hill in the bush, where transportation could not be obvious. Immediately, techniques were used to take out all the drums from their hiding places and load them into the trucks chartered for the purpose.

Once this was done, the operation continued on 2 April, 2023 in the Centre region and particularly in Awae. All the products were seized.

The operation ended without any major incident and a total volume of 17,240 litres of fuel was seized of which 13,150 litres of super and 4,090 litres of gasoil.