BNI probes Foreign Affairs staff over Diplomatic Passports fraud

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) has invited some officials from the Foreign Affairs Ministry over diplomatic passport fraud.

This comes after reports that several diplomatic passports were issued by some of the staff without authorisation.

A wanted Togolese national was found to have obtained a Ghanaian Diplomatic Passport which was issued without authorisation.

Also a Russian businessman in Ghana, who is on the wanted list of the East European country, Ramazan Kafarov was found not to only hold an ordinary Ghanaian passport but also a Ghanaian diplomatic passport.

Circumstances under which Ramazan and the Togolese obtained the passports are unclear but the laws of Ghana do not allow non-citizens to obtain diplomatic passports.

Speaking to Bola Ray on Starr Chat Wednesday, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hannah Tetteh revealed that all Diplomatic Passports issued fraudulently have been cancelled from the system.

She added that despite the fact that no official has been prosecuted in the ongoing investigations, several measures have been taken to ensure that no foreigner is able to obtain a diplomatic passport.

“There were a number of passports including this Russian who was picked up recently...where you saw that the names of the people with DPs couldn’t possibly be Ghanaian names, so I called for the application forms to see if this is something I had authorised...and indeed it did come back that it was without authorisation.

“As a result of which we cancelled the passports from the system, handed over the information to the BNI to conduct investigations which have resulted in a number of staff [from my outfit] being invited for questioning and to the best of my knowledge investigations are ongoing but no prosecution has commenced yet.

The former Trades Minister added: “there were lapses in the system so we have reviewed the processes once again for the issuance of diplomatic passports to make sure that it is not possible to subvert the system”.