Two Cameroonians face trial tomorrow

Wednesday, 03 March 2010 01:37 Kyaw Kha

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) - Two Cameroonian football players arrested by Rangoon police for fraud will be produced in court tomorrow.

A case was filed against the Cameroonian footballers by the police in the Lanmadaw Township court and they are now being held in Burma's notorious Insein prison, a source close to the court told Mizzima.

"They were first charged under section 489(d). They now face a new charge under section 224 but the evidence is yet to be presented on this charge," he said.

It is alleged that last month during their stay in Rangoon's MGM Hotel in Lanmadaw Township the duo claimed that they could make counterfeit US dollar notes. A suspicious official from the hotel informed the police

"They claimed that they could make US dollar notes on plain white paper," a man close to the Lanmadaw police station told Mizzima.

The domestic journal 'Weekly Eleven', said investigators learnt that the duo claimed that they could make counterfeit US dollar notes in 10, 20 and 100 denominations. According to the authorities, in order to prove they were able to make counterfeit notes the Cameroonians took real US dollar notes, which they claimed were fake and used some sort of chemical process to turn the notes into what appeared to be plain white pieces of paper. The journal reported that by using a special infrared light and chemical powder one could see that the notes were in fact real.

The two Cameroonians are football players, who had originally come to Burma to play professional football in the Myanmar National League (MNL) tournament. They played matches with some clubs but the MNL football clubs did not sign them up, a journalist from the Burmese domestic media said.

One of them, Tecow Teta Joseph Appod, fled from custody while he was being questioned by police on February 23 afternoon. He sought refuge in the French Embassy in Rangoon. Policemen chased him and were able to convince the French Embassy authorities to hand him over.

The first ever professional tournament for the MNL began in early 2009 and many foreign professional football players came to Burma to participate. Many of the foreign players were from Cameroon.