swaziland times

MANZINI – Chief Justice (CJ) Bheki Maphalala has issued arrest warrants against eight employees of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Supreme Court yesterday issued the arrest warrants and search and seizure warrants against the employees following an urgent application by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).The warrant was issued under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 2008. According to the warrant, ACC officials were authorized to search the homesteads of the employees involved and further seize any material they believe was used to carry out the fraudulent activities.Another mandate is to empower ACC officers to arrest them (employees). Five of the employees involved are women and hold senior positions. The eight employees were suspected of belonging to a group that sold refugee identities and passports to foreigners.

Implicate

According to sources, as of yesterday afternoon, a team of ACC police officers had rounded up some of the employees involved and were planning to detain them.
The officer involved will not be named pending a court appearance.The application for the arrest warrant follows parallel investigations by the ACC and the Royal Swaziland Police Service (REPS) into the same matter. The investigation into the matter began in 2022, when the Home Office launched an internal investigation into the sale of refugee identities and passports to foreigners.Investigations by the Anti-Corruption Commission and police reportedly uncovered a syndicate engaged in the trafficking of document identities and refugee passports.

It was revealed that the group charged any undocumented citizen who wanted to be treated as an official refugee in the Kingdom of Swaziland between €30,000 and €50,000 for new legal documents. An internal investigation revealed that more than 100 immigration officials were transferred last year. Furthermore, the 2023/2024 performance report of the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development shows that the theft of security documents such as passports and travel documents is so rampant that the government intends to install a €3.9 million security monitoring system at the Immigration Department of the Ministry of the Interior. At the time, the Immigration Department was facing challenges with the loss and theft of security documents such as passports and travel documents.

Monitoring

The report stated that the government will spend at least EGP 3.99 million to procure and install security surveillance systems (digital surveillance cameras, control equipment and other accessories) in selected immigration offices where security documents are stored within the ministry.Once the arrest warrants are executed, the number of people arrested in connection with the Home Office fraud activities will reach 11. The ACC recently reported that the agency is investigating 250 cases, one of which is the Home Affairs case.The first person to be arrested in connection with the fraudulent activities at the Ministry of Home Affairs was Zimbabwean national Delight Moyo, who faces charges of bribery, corruption and fraud.
It is suspected that Moyo was acting as a middleman between some immigration officials and “clients” who needed passports.

It was alleged that when Moyo was arrested, he was found in possession of five Swaziland passports, suspected to have been stolen from the Ministry of Home Affairs.Assistant Immigration Officer Mboneni Nkosinathi Zwane was the second person arrested and charged with 26 offences including fraud, theft and money laundering. He is currently out on bail of 100,000 Egyptian pounds, which must be paid in cash.Benjamin Mensah Larbi from Ghana was the last to be arrested and faces three charges. During his court appearance, Larbi promised to assist investigators with information to expose cabinet corruption.At the same time, the survey also found that most government services are provided in the backyards of some civil servants’ homes.

Investigators, acting on leads, discovered that there was a syndicate that was draining money from thousands of Emanlangenis in the state, who were providing services to the ministry right in their backyards.
Investigators reportedly found some civil servants selling government documents such as birth certificates, national identification cards, marriage certificates, travel documents, international passports, visas and work permits. According to sources, the modus operandi of these corrupt civil servants is to deal with agents who inform them that someone needs the documents. Civil servants would allegedly bring the documents to their residences, where they would then be collected by the “clients”.
Some civil servants were also allegedly found in possession of blank documents which were allegedly filled in as per “orders”.The clients were alleged to have been paying the public servants in cash, which was discovered during raids on the homes of some public servants accused of fraud in leaking government documents on the black market.

syndicate

Some civil servants are understood to have been caught with cash in their homes, while others have hidden it in their cars, and there have also been recent reports of a South African syndicate involved in forging government documents such as passports.Investigations revealed that the syndicate sold the documents to foreigners who were identified as Swazi nationals by birth.The investigation found that some people who obtained forged documents were on the run in their own country. They used forged documents to seek asylum but were actually fugitives from the justice system.Investigations revealed that in one case, a sum of €195,000 was transferred to the bank account of a government official involved in the Ministry of Home Affairs, presumably by members of a criminal group in neighbouring South Africa.

According to investigations, an official of the Ministry of Home Affairs was found in possession of materials used to make passports and it is highly suspected that these materials will be delivered to criminal groups in the Republic of South Africa. The investigation further revealed that between October 2023 and January 2024, a Ministry of Internal Affairs employee received a total of EGP 195,000 through his First National Bank account from people transferring money in the Republic of South Africa. The existence of the South African criminal group came to light during an investigation into Zwane, a Ministry of Internal Affairs employee, who faces 26 charges.
Investigators said in the report that in February 2024, they received information about a suspicious group that issued Swazi passports to foreigners who were given Swazi identity by birth. The police stressed that they had learned that some officials of the Ministry of Interior were involved in these illegal activities.