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[yialousa1971]

Fake embassy in Ghana sold American visas for 10 years and was staffed by Turkish 'consular officials'

http://www.breitbart.com/national-secur ... ut-decade/

"Ghana has been rocked by the shutdown of a fake U.S. embassy run by
Ghanaian and Turkish mobsters, which issued phony visas for a decade
with the indulgence of corrupt Ghanaian officials.

The Washington Post describes the operation:

For a decade, an American flag flew outside a battered pink
building in Ghana’s capital city, welcoming out-of-town visitors
who, once inside, found a photo of President Obama hanging on the
wall. Signs confirmed to travelers — who had been bused in from the
most remote parts of West Africa — that they had arrived at the
U.S. Embassy in Accra.

The “consular officers” working there were not Americans, but they
spoke English and Dutch and issued official-looking visas and
identification papers. They charged their customers $6,000.

The real U.S. embassy is in an entirely different, much wealthier
neighborhood, and is protected by security fences.

“Raids led to the recovery of 150 passports from 10 countries and visas
from the U.S., India, South Africa and the European Schengen zone,” the
Associated Press reports.

The Associated Press adds that the U.S. State Department did not state
whether customers were able to travel on these visas, some of which
were “fraudulently obtained” but “legitimate,” according to the State
Department. False documents including bank records, education records,
and birth certificates were also provided.

An industrial sewing machine at a nearby dress shop was reportedly used
to bind the covers on counterfeit documents produced by the operation.
The dress shop was also reportedly employed to ship fake documents
across Africa and Europe.

The phony embassy advertised its services with billboards and fliers in
Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Tobago, in addition to sending out cars to “the
most remote parts of West Africa” to ferry customers to the Ghanaian
capital city of Accra.

Despite all this advertising, the phony embassy was able to stay in
business for the better part of a decade with help from corrupt
officials bribed by the gangsters to look the other way.

A corrupt Ghanaian attorney was also a key player in the operation,
serving as Africa’s version of Better Call Saul. One of his
contributions involved keeping the police from searching the dress shop
by convincing them a different court case was already pending on the
store. As the State Department explained, this other case was
“determined to be fallacious, but it bought enough time for corrupt
officials to arrange for bail for members of the organized crime group
so that they could move the document production facility outside of
Accra.”

One of the most curious details of this story is the way it was
reported. The phony embassy was actually raided and shut down over the
summer, but even though the U.S. State Department was a key part of the
investigation, the raid wasn’t publicized in any news releases by State
or its Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Only last week did the news break
in Ghanaian media, prompting international coverage from major media
over the weekend.

“State Department officials in Ghana deferred questions to the media
office in Washington, which did not immediately respond to a request
for more information,” the Washington Post reports.

The State Department mentioned that an informant also said a fake
embassy for the Netherlands was being operated in Accra. The UK
Telegraph reported that “officials in the Netherlands were not
immediately reachable for comment on Sunday.”

According to Reuters, it was a tip to American authorities that kicked
off the investigation, which ultimately included “the Ghana Detectives
Bureau and police as well as other international partners to shut down
the ring.”

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:
National Security, Africa, Ghana, Netherlands, U.S. State Department,
visa fraud "



Mogelijk Nederlandse nepambassade in Ghana
Criminelen hebben tien jaar lang een nepambassade van de Verenigde Staten gerund in Ghana. Opvallend is dat ook informatie aan het licht is gekomen over een mogelijke Nederlandse nepambassade in de Ghanese hoofdstad. Daar wordt onderzoek naar gedaan.
Bewerkt door: Redactie 04-12-16, 01:12 Laatste update: 23:02 Bron: ANP
http://archive.is/gNwXw


Minister Bert Koenders was eerder dit jaar op bezoek in Ghana. © anp
[ok kids please refrain from more psychedelic druggies you hear?]


SEE ALSO:

http://nltimes.nl/2016/12/06/fake-us-em ... ssy-sought

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... uing-visas

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12 ... d-turkish/

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/851078/fak ... -shut-down