In Benin, the Republican Police are waging a fierce fight against online scammers. In a press release dated Wednesday 24 November 2021, the Littoral Police Department announced that it had arrested nine suspected cybercriminals, Thursday 18 last november.
The operation was carried out by elements of the Republican Police during an unexpected raid in the Tanto district located in the first district of Cotonou. With an agility of which only the police have the secret, during the search carried out in the new premises, they were able to arrest suspected cybercriminals and seize “twenty-six (26) laptop computers, fifteen (15) cell phones containing compromising data, our (11) wifi routers and many other objects of dubious origin », indicates the press release. She also informs of the presentation of the latter before the national prosecutor.
A phenomenon that continues
The State began to take the phenomenon seriously by adopting, in 2011, the law on the fight against corruption. This has in its article 124 that "anyone who has falsified computerized documents, whatever their form, likely to cause harm to others, is punished by imprisonment of one to five years and a fine of two million CFA francs to twenty million. This law has been supplemented by the Digital Code, which is a particularly repressive tool.
Despite this, cybercriminals always had the wind in their sails until the Central Office for the Suppression of Cybercrime was set up (Ocrc) printer living in Abomey-Calavi agrees, today, is the real armed arm of the government in the field. With a political will displayed by the authorities and according to certain official statistics, these are approximately 600 people who have been apprehended in this way in the past three years. This augurs well for the future of this fight, which seems to be an endless fight, as cybercriminals are so fertile in creativity..
Bachir ISSA