Criminal record extract

This page is not built from the Treasury's catalogue. The catalogue has no criminal record entry. What follows is read from the 2026 edition of the tax code, archived here, and from what the Ministry of Justice does and does not publish.

One stamp, on the extract, not on the request

The bulletin n° 3 is the extract of your criminal record that is issued to you rather than to a court or an administration. You are asked for it when you apply for a job, for certain licences, and, among other things, when a Cameroonian reintegrates into nationality and applies for an identity card.

The tax code treats the request and the document differently, and getting that the wrong way round is how most published figures go wrong.

Article 428 lists what is liable to the stamp calculated on the size of the paper. Item 19 is "les bulletins n° 3 du casier judiciaire". Article 547 is the tariff, and in the 2026 edition all three paper formats are 1,500 FCFA.

Article 473 lists what is exempt from stamp duty generally. Item 7 is "la demande du bulletin n° 3 du casier judiciaire délivré aux particuliers".

Those two articles read together rather than against each other. Item 8 of article 428 catches "tous mémoires, requêtes ou pétitions sous forme de lettre ou autrement, adressés à toutes les autorités constituées et aux administrations", which would otherwise make a handwritten request liable. Article 473 (7) takes it back out by name. One stamp, on the document you receive. None on the paper you hand in.

A third article removes a formality people sometimes price. Article 338 (19) exempts "les extraits n° 3 du casier judiciaire" from registration. That is the enregistrement formality, not the stamp, and the two are different things.

One number to keep out of your budget. The articles on the registers court clerks must keep carry a 2,000 FCFA fine for each omission. That is a penalty on the clerk, not a fee payable by you.

What a registry charges

We do not know, and neither does anybody who publishes a figure.

We searched the whole of the 2026 tax code for a registry tariff covering delivery of a criminal record extract. There is none. The provisions on frais de justice concern sums paid out to magistrates and clerks from a court costs account, not a charge on a citizen asking for a document.

The law that creates the criminal record fixes no fee either. The Criminal Procedure Code, Law No. 2005/007 of 27 July 2005, devotes articles 573 to 583 to the casier judiciaire. It establishes a record at the registry of each Court of First Instance and a central file at the Ministry of Justice for people born abroad, and it governs the three bulletins and their delivery. It sets no tariff and requires no stamp. The only money in it is article 582, on an application to have the record corrected: if the application is refused the applicant pays the costs, and if it succeeds the Treasury does.

The Ministry of Justice has a page for this exact procedure, and the page is empty. Its body reads "Contenu en attente". Two neighbouring procedure pages are empty in the same way, the electronic justice page is empty, and the Ministry's own site search returns nothing for casier judiciaire, for timbre, for greffe or for frais. The Ministry's site also fails TLS outright and answers only over plain HTTP.

That matters for how to read this page. The absence is evidenced from the authority itself, not inferred from our failure to find something.

So the honest position has three parts, and they are different kinds of statement. The stamp on the extract is 1,500 FCFA, established by an instrument. The stamp on the application is zero, established by an instrument. The registry fee is unpublished, which is not the same as being zero. If a counter asks you for more, we cannot tell you what authority it is acting under, because no authority has published one.

The contrast is worth one line. The Ministry's own database of legal texts carries a tariff of notarial acts, set by decree in 1995 and amended by decree in 2019. The state fixes this kind of tariff by decree when it wants to. It has not done so for the registry.

The figures circulating, and why they fail

The 1,000 FCFA figure is simply out of date. Article 547 priced normal paper and a half sheet at 1,000 FCFA until the 2023 Finance Law levelled all three formats at 1,500, with effect from 1 January 2023.

The 2,100 FCFA total is wrong twice. It counts a stamp on the application, which article 473 (7) exempts by name, and it prices each stamp at the superseded 1,000.

As for the 100 FCFA search fee, there is a search fee in Cameroonian tax law and it is not this one. Article 408 allows 1,000 FCFA for a search in the registers of the Receveurs des Impôts. That is the tax office, not the court registry, and it is the most likely origin of a figure that has been travelling for years attached to the wrong counter.

The same publisher gives a 2,100 FCFA total on one page and a single 1,000 FCFA stamp on another. We note it not to score a point but because it is the normal condition of this information: one site, two pages, two answers, no instrument on either.

Legalising it for use abroad

If you need the extract authenticated for a foreign authority, there is a charge in principle. Article 470 bis of the tax code subjects a list of formalities to a specific stamp duty, and since the ordinance of 20 June 2024 that list expressly includes "les authentifications des documents auprès des missions diplomatiques et postes consulaires".

The article creates the charge without stating the amount. So a charge exists and its rate is not published where the charge is created.

What missions publish does not reconcile, and we are not going to average it into a national figure. The consulate in Marseille asks 15 euros in fiscal stamps per document to legalise a criminal record extract, plus a registered return envelope at the applicant's cost, on a sheet that carries no number, no date and no authority. The embassy in Berlin publishes 10 euros for legalising or certifying a document, with no line for the criminal record, on a page marked September 2025. Neither is hosted on a government domain in Cameroon.

If this applies to you, read your own mission's page and expect it to differ from the next one.

What this page does not tell you

What a registry will ask for. How long it takes. Whether any online route exists, because the Ministry of Justice publishes nothing we could find either way.

One thing we deliberately leave out. The provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code said to govern the three bulletins are widely cited by article number. We could not read that text on any official host, so we do not reproduce the article numbers. A citation we have not verified is worth no more than no citation.

Sources

Read on 21 October 2026.

• General Tax Code, 2026 editionour copy, impots.cm. Article 428 (19) for liability, article 547 for the tariff, article 473 (7) for the exemption of the application, article 338 (19) for the registration exemption, article 408 for the tax office search fee, article 470 bis for consular authentication, and the articles on clerks' registers for the 2,000 FCFA penalty. Archived in full and read directly.
• Ordinance No. 2024/001 of 20 June 2024our copy, which added the consular authentication wording to article 470 bis. Filed at prc.cm.
• Criminal Procedure Code, Law No. 2005/007 of 27 July 2005, Book V, Title IV, articles 573 to 583, read on the Prime Minister's office website. It fixes no fee.
• Law No. 2022/020 of 27 December 2022our copy, Finance Law for 2023, article seventeenth, which set article 547 at 1,500 FCFA for all three paper formats. Archived here and read directly.
• Ministry of Justice, minjustice.gov.cm. The page for this procedure exists and its body reads "Contenu en attente". The site fails TLS and answers only over plain HTTP.
• Délégation Générale à la Sûreté Nationale, dgsn.cm, which requires a bulletin n° 3 among the documents for an identity card on reintegration into nationality.
• Consulate General of Cameroon in Marseille and the Cameroonian embassy in Berlin, for the two legalisation tariffs that do not match.
• infospratiques.cm, an aggregator, for the competing claims above.

There is no online Journal Officiel for Cameroon. prc.cm is the de facto gazette.

If a figure here is wrong, tell us. The method is written out at how we verify.

Page updated 21 October 2026