Between December last year, and March this year, 10 foreigners, nine Nigerians and a Togolese, have been arrested for attempting to acquire Ghanaian passports.
They are alleged to have changed their names to Ghanaian names.
The suspects, who were arrested by personnel of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), are said to have been aided by middlemen, popularly known as ‘goro’ boys who claimed they could facilitate the process for them.
They were subsequently put before court and three of them fined, ranging between GH1,000 and GH1,500 and subsequently repatriated.
They are Bismark Obinna alias John Commey, Lukemen Issaka, alias Prince Buisah and Musah Abdulkaria, all Nigerians.
The rest, Prince Peter Akinware alias Kwasi Akinware, Bashiru Zakaria, Ayuba yakubu, Ayuba Zakariya, Emmanuel Dzumko and Christy Adedeji, all Nigerians, and Gizelle Afi Amou, Togolese, have their cases pending before the courts.
The Head of the Visa Fraud and Documentation Unit at the (CID) Headquarters, Assistant Superintendent (ASP) Seth Sewornu, disclosed this to The Ghanaian Times.
He said following reports of activities of ‘goro’ men at the passport offices, the police and other intelligence personnel intensified their operations to clamp down on them, but were unsuccessful.
He said upon thorough scrutiny and verification of the documents submitted to the passport offices, the officials detected some anomalies on the forms, including fake birth certificates and fake Ghanaians names.
ASP Sewornu said the suspects were subsequently invited to go for their passports and upon interrogation claimed they contacted some middlemen at some locations who charged them between GH2, 000 and GH5, 000, to acquire the passports for them.
They were, unable to identify the so-called middlemen when they led the Police to the locations.
ASP Sewornu said the accused also claimed they decided to acquire the Ghanaian passport because of its recognition worldwide.
ASP Sewornu said his outfits, together with other intelligence personnel have intensified operations within and around the passport offices, to weed out the middlemen from the system and asked the public to go through the right processes to acquire their passports, instead of using, middlemen.
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