?Ghana book" sells like hot kenkey & fish

Fraud at Ghana?s passport office

Two policemen wearing the national coat of arms on their glittering beret, stand hands akimbo guarding the State House, while the hoisted national flag of Ghana flies at full mast around them.

Near this house is the Independence Square, where after a protracted liberation struggle with blood and sweat, the country?s First President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, stood and famously proclaimed Ghana?s independence [... correction: it was rather at th Polo grounds]

But, some of the workers inside this house called the Passport Office of Ghana are busily destroying Ghana?s pride and image by fraudulently processing original Ghanaian passports in large quantities, for export to ?non-Ghanaian criminals?, in countries like Libya, Italy, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Holland, Britain, Germany and others.

Without recourse to due procedures, they process the original passports which are signed by the Director of Passports in Ghana at a wholesale price of three hundred thousand cedis.
This is later retailed to the ?non-Ghanaian criminals? for between $300 and $400 and ?250 to ?300 internationally.

The Ghanaian Passport which was revered and respected across the world has now been reduced to an ordinary booklet, stripped of its solemnity and dignity.

The ?non- Ghanaian criminals? end up using the passport to denigrate Ghana?s national identity by posing as Ghanaians and engage in 419 fraudulent activities across the world.

On-going Crusading Guide?s investigations in Holland, Italy, Thailand and Germany have uncovered four of the many Passport contractors who decided to spill the beans on the criminal dealings and the free for all corruption within the passport offices of Ghana.

They and their colleagues, our investigations indicated, have been doing brisk business over the years by coming to the passport office of Ghana every month to order large quantities of passports ranging from five hundred to thousand copies at a time and exporting them to their ?criminal clients? across the world who initially register with them in their well established offices anytime they need them.

?Ghana ?book? sells like hot kenkey and fish. Sometimes within a month I register about 300 to 600 hundred customers in my office (location withheld for now) all of them wanting some of the Ghana ?book? passport.

The profit margin is good so I come home myself, if you multiply 400 dollars by 350 you see that the profit is good.

In Ghana I pay ?300,000 for bulk price and ?500, 000 for express price through my friends working in the passport office.

Sometimes, when I want the ?book? in 2 hours for a first class customer, they take extra cash and claim they are going to give it to the Director of Passports to sign it fast.

I do not see them giving it to the Director, but they always bring it within the stipulated hours.

If less than 50 customers come and register to do the ?book? in a particular month and I feel I don?t want to travel down to Ghana myself, then I send the passport size photographs to my boys in Accra through the Makola women to do it for me.

My boys give it to my business partners at the passport office.

When they finish them, usually on the same day, they then send them through the makola women again to be brought to me here in Thailand for distribution to my clients, some of whom are in Malaysia and Singapore?, Assiedu, one of the international passport contractors told the Crusading Guide newspaper.

Our investigations further revealed that the rush for Ghanaian passports is as a result of the international community?s suspicions about, and distrust of holders of passports of certain African countries, one of them being Nigeria, due to their dubious 419 activities having earned worldwide notoriety.

?So they have all resorted to using Ghanaians passports. That is why our business is thriving and we are making a lot of money?, Assiedu said.

Asked why they did not use the Ghanaian embassies but preferred to use the Accra office for their dealings, Aminu Mohammed, one of the contractors, cited bureaucracy and sometimes the insistence on due process as reason for shying away from the Embassies.

?In the Embassies and High Commissions of Ghana, they have too many bureaucratic tendencies, they even require the physical presence of the people and sometimes they would ask you to speak a Ghanaian language, which is a problem to most clients.

Their fees are also too high, that is why we use our connections at the Accra passport office who are very fast and reliable, they do not fake but give you the original which makes the customers happy?, Aminu submitted.

Meanwhile, a reliable source at the Ghanaian Mission in Italy has confirmed that every week, some 15 passports are seized from non-Ghanaians in Italy.

In one swoop, 100 passports were retrieved from non-Ghanaians in Germany.

Kwame Asante, a Ghanaian domiciled in Hamburg (Altona) told this reporter in an interview that Ghanaian passports litter the streets of Hamburg and Berlin for easy buying at ?200 or less. ?Lots of our brothers from Nigeria have resorted to buying our passports for criminal activities, and the embassy here is doing nothing about it.

Last week, I met three Nigerians at a call centre all carrying authentic Ghanaian passports. When I tried to confront them, they threatened to assault me. So what can I do as an individual?? he lamented, in anger and despair.

Similar comments were passed by a cross section of Ghanaians interviewed in Holland.

Baba Tofique told the Crusading Guide reporter in Amsterdam that the Ghanaian passport has been rendered worthless by the Passport Office in Accra due to their fraudulent activities.

?Those boys there have completely ruined the image of Ghana. The original passport can be done for even dogs and cats? he said

. Meanwhile, the Director of Passports. Kwesi Quartey had stated at a ?meet the press? session recently held in Accra that his outfit was doing a lot to curb the issue of passport fraud in the country.

He added that they had been collaborating with the State Security Agencies to stamp out passport fraud in the country.

Having studied the modus operandi of the Passport contractors, The Crusading Guide reporter, upon returning home decided to verify the allegations.

So, armed with cash, a glittering suit case, an eight month old braided hair and a hired Mercedes Benz car to match, all in a bid to smash the passport syndicate, this reporter headed for the passport office in Accra where he was confronted with numerous, shocking and jaw dropping revelations.

The officials of the passport office were ready to do any number of passports for this reporter for a fee of four hundred thousand cedis (?400,000).
When the reporter got there, one of the officials who happened to be at the security post, within a twinkle of an eye took up the contract of doing five hundred copies of Ghanaian passports to be given to non- nationals in the United Kingdom where this journalist claimed he had just returned from.

At the plush Golden Tulip Hotel, the journalist finally sealed the contract for five hundred Passports over wine and champagne with the passport office official.

As part of the deal, no birth certificates and passport forms were required. All that one needed to do was to provide names and pictures to match and bingo, you had your passports.

As a test case, this journalist went through The Crusading Guide?s picture box and picked pictures of dead people and faked names for the passport office official.

Within some few days, the passports were done. One for the President of Ghana, President John Agyekum Kufuor, another for the Vice President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, one for the Inspector General of Police and many more faked names.
Hard copy authentic Ghanaian passports were issued and duly signed by the Director of Passports.

The system was so porous that a picture belonging to Mr. B. A. Mensah, a popular business magnate, was used for a passport purportedly for President John Agyekum Kufuor without anybody detecting.

?Give me the contract, my brother, I have proven beyond reasonable doubt that I have the capacity to do passports in large quantities for persons whether they are in Ghana or outside. I don?t need any birth certificate, neither do I need any passport form, Please, let me start working on the five hundred passports contract fast. I have done it before and I will do it again?, Iddrisu of the Passport Office, confidently told this journalist at the Golden Tulip Hotel.
Meanwhile, Senior Police officials have already taken delivery of over 17 names of fraudsters in the passport syndicate from The Crusading Guide and have ordered investigations into the matter in collaboration with this paper.
Please stay tuned for more on how some inner rooms of the University of Ghana, Legon and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have been turned into passport offices where large quantities are done for all sorts of criminals.