Three slapped with hefty sentences for passport fraud
Two South Africans and a Pakistani national were slapped with lengthy sentences for passport-related crimes in two separate cases.
Arfan Ahmed, a Pakistani national who was arrested in a sting operation by various law enforcement agencies at the Krugersdorp Home Affairs offices in March 2022, was sentenced to eight years imprisonment by the Brixton Magistrate’s Court.
Ahmed was sentenced for the passports that were found in his house following his arrest in Krugersdorp.
"Ahmed is a kingpin of a passport syndicate that sought to undermine the country’s laws by fraudulently procuring South African passports for Pakistani nationals who do not have a legal right to possess South African passports,” the Department of Home Affairs said in a statement on Monday.
"He was working with corrupt Home Affairs officials in a network that spanned Gauteng, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Mpumalanga. While the Pakistani is languishing in jail, the 12 corrupt Home Affairs officials who enabled his scheme have already been fired and submitted to the Hawks for criminal investigations".
Meanwhile, the Durban Magistrate’s Court sentenced Anda Ngozi and Nomathandazo Mboyane to 26 and 24 years, respectively.
The two South Africans were Home Affairs officials employed in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape.
The two fraudulently processed 52 passports to foreign nationals, mainly from the DRC, who were not legally entitled to the documents.
ALSO READ:
