FRAUD SUMMARY FOR CONAKRY GUINEA

UNCLAS CONAKRY 000335 DEPT PASS TO, NVC PORTSMITH NH DEPT PASS TO, KCC WILLIAMSBURG KY DEPT FOR CA/FPP E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KFRD CVIS CPAS CMGT ASEC GV SUBJECT: FRAUD SUMMARY FOR CONAKRY GUINEA ¶1. Following is Post's fraud summary for the period September 2008 through March 2009; responses are keyed to Reftel. -------------- COUNTRY CONDITIONS -------------- ¶2. In December 2008, the long-time President of Guinea died and within hours a Captain in the military proclaimed himself the new president. The resulting military junta, the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD),is now the de facto Guinean Government. The CNDD president has made several speeches railing against corruption in government, but Post has not seen any changes that would indicate newly appointed ministers and other officials of the new government are any less corrupt than the previous group, although their access to funds has been severely restricted by the CNDD. The international community in general, especially the donor countries, are limiting interactions with the new government. Meanwhile, the overall political uncertainty and the lack of rule of law is discouraging would-be investors. Guinea remains a high fraud environment. -------------- NIV FRAUD -------------- ¶3. Nonimmigrant visa fraud has remained essentially unchanged. Problem areas include: -- Fraudulent documents, both governmental and non- governmental. Most of the fraudulent documents seen by Post are produced by the proper authority, whether a government office, school, or bank, albeit to order, that is, containing the information requested by the person paying for the document. -- Post is experiencing a resurgence in the number of problematic petitions for P visas. DHS routinely approves petitions for P-1 or P-3 visas for numerous beneficiaries solely on the petitioner's say-so about who is qualified for the respective status. Post in turn finds that almost none of the listed beneficiaries are qualified. Being included on a P visa petition has become a popular route to obtaining entrance into the U.S. for unqualified applicants, or for obtaining the visa and then selling it to someone who will use it as a member of the group to enter the U.S. for other purposes. Post has discovered two cases of the latter. -- Local music/dance has become a big business, not only as a venue for obtaining P visas for unqualified applicants, but also as a means of drawing in American citizens, some few of whom have made several visits to Guinea over a period of years. Whether an American citizen makes one visit or several, the end product is usually the same: one or more of the progenitors of the group hosting the American(s) either ends up on a P visa petition filed by the citizen, or married to or engaged to be married to the citizen. Additional non-immigrant visa (NIV) fraud involves concealment of prior violations, such as selling products produced in Guinea while in the U.S. on a tourist visa, travel for undisclosed medical treatment for which the traveler cannot pay, or, alternatively, malafide intent. -------------- IV FRAUD -------------- ¶4. Immigrant visas for Guineans are processed by AmEmbassy Dakar. Post is asked by AmEmbassy Dakar, and other regional Posts, to verify documents pertaining to immigrant visa cases, half of which are found to have been counterfeited. -------------- DV FRAUD -------------- ¶5. Diversity visas for Guineans are processed by AmEmbassy Dakar. -------------- ACS AND U.S. PASSPORT FRAUD -------------- ¶6. ACS AND U.S. PASSPORT FRAUD. The biggest ACS challenge faced by Post is the renewal of passports originally issued to infants born in the U.S. to nonimmigrant Guineans. Apart from the usual challenge of connecting a grown child to the photo of an infant in the original passport, a widespread absence of parents available for interview exacerbates the problem. Post has encountered dozens of cases of supposed relatives standing in for both parents. Even if the parents have sent authorization for the relative to act in their names, identification documents are often of questionable value. On several occasions, when Post asked for verifiable documentation of a parent's identity, specifically a U.S. passport or other USG issued document, the supposed parents reported residing and working in the U.S. without legal status. Post has encountered several dozen cases of parents of American-born children who are or were living illegally in the U.S. for long periods. -------------- ADOPTION FRAUD -------------- ¶7. International adoptions from Guinea are rare; there have been only two cases in the reported period, neither with any indication of fraud. -------------- USE OF DNA TESTING -------------- ¶8. Post uses DNA testing extensively in the processing of Visas 92 and 93 follow-to-join cases. The incidence of unrelated children on whose behalf petitions are filed is 30 percent on average. In addition, DNA has been suggested for several passport renewal cases where the expired passport is so old that a positive identification of the individual at the window cannot be ascertained. -------------- ASYLUM AND OTHER DHS BENEFIT FRAUD -------------- ¶9. In general, virtually all asylum claims by Guineans were without merit, though accepted by DHS or an immigration judge. In most cases, the claim of asylum came about as part of a planned strategy of economic migration. Following acceptance of their asylum claim, the asylee files petitions for as many supposed family members as possible. Post processes approximately 40 to 60 Visas 92/93 follow-to-join cases per month. Of these, at least 30 percent of the children claimed do not pass DNA testing as biological offspring. Another 10 percent of the children claimed are nieces or nephews supposedly adopted, albeit from living parents. Approximately 20 percent of the total Visas 92/93 workload is comprised of spouse follow-to-join cases where there are no children involved. One hundred percent of these appear to be marriages for immigration purposes - for example, marriages filed only days before one party to the marriage left for the U.S. Regrettably, Post has had difficulty coming up with evidence to prove fraud. In addition to processing Visas 92/93, Post processes numerous cases of lost or stolen "green cards" or other LPR or refugee travel documentation. These seem to come in spates, with as many as a dozen in a week, then none for several weeks. All of the aliens processed for lost documents to date have checked out as legitimate, but what became of the original documents remains a mystery. -------------- -------------- ALIEN SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING, ORGANIZED CRIME, TERRORIST TRAVEL -------------- -------------- ¶10. Guinea is a major transit point for narcotics being transported, primarily, to Europe. Most of the major players in the drug trade were, until recently, members of the government, or persons otherwise close to the government, or persons protected by the government. Since there were no arrests on record of such persons, it was virtually impossible to withhold issuing a visa if such was requested for "official travel." The new president has made a show of attempting to stop drug trafficking through Guinea, but the effort is conducted without respect for human rights or rule of law, and has not yet touched military elements. There are reports of alien smuggling/trafficking in persons across Guinea's land borders as well as trafficking aboard seagoing vessels departing from Guinean ports. Most sources indicate that hundreds of people, primarily women and children, are trafficked annually within and through Guinea. However, alien smuggling encountered by the Consular Section has been of the familial variety, specifically, one family member assisting another to obtain a visa for which the latter was not qualified. On several occasions, Post has encountered cases of one adult applying for non-immigrant visas with numerous minor children; on one occasion there were 14 children, all, ostensibly, vacationing in the same small apartment in NYC. This family was connected with a minister in the previous government, and was obviously trying to Qget out of DodgeQ before President Conte died and his regime fell. Equally troubling are reports of American citizen children of Guinean parents being shuttled back and forth between the U.S. and Guinea by persons other than their parents. There is nothing that Post can do to monitor such travel, but Post has tightened its requirements for documenting parental identity and consent for issuance of a minor passport. -------------- DS CRIMINAL FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS -------------- ¶11. There were no criminal investigations in the current reporting cycle. -------------- -------------- HOST COUNTRY PASSPORT, IDENTITY DOCUMENTS, AND CIVIL REGISTRY -------------- -------------- ¶12. What procedures the Government of Guinea may have in place to issue trustworthy passports and identity documents is not known; however, in general, all such procedures can be easily by-passed with a surprisingly small payment to the issuing official. As a result, no identity document issued by the government, though issued by the legitimate issuing authority, can be trusted. Counterfeit birth, death, and marriage certificates are also is abundance, but these can sometimes be checked against registers kept by the issuing agencies in most locations. Post has approached the government on several occasions urging tighter controls, so far without results. -------------- COOPERATION WITH HOST COUNTRY AUTHORITIES -------------- ¶13. Cooperation between USG agencies and Guinean authorities is generally cordial. Nevertheless, Post's disinclination to yield without question to blatant visa abuse has raised tensions. In addition, the U.S. governmentQs refusal to recognize the new military government, along with the cutoff in non-humanitarian aid, has made cooperation from the new government sporadic. -------------- AREAS OF PARTICULAR CONCERN -------------- ¶14. A large and, apparently, growing number of American-born minor children are residing in Guinea without one or both of their parents. Such children are subject to local living and medical conditions, which are always below U.S. standards. One four year old American citizen child residing with an uncle here died in March 2008 from a sudden onset of illness, probably malaria. In April 2008, the local living conditions of a six year old American citizen child became a factor in a child custody struggle between the parents which is currently playing out in the U.S. Another aspect of this general situation is that neither parent is available to sign passport renewal applications. In addition to opening the door to passport fraud, Post has found it difficult in several cases to definitively identify the parents of such children, opening the door to possible trafficking, or, if not outright trafficking, possibly a form of child abuse or neglect. Another concern is the tendency on the part of some parents residing in the U.S. to send unwanted American-born children to live with family members in Guinea, including, on two occasions encountered by Post, a non-American former spouse. In one case encountered by Post, when the "unwanted" child reached the age of 18, he asked for a repatriation loan; what has become of him is not known. The other case, which has yet to be resolved, involves a minor child with on-going health problems not treatable in Guinea. Post has encountered three cases of a Guinean wife/mother, long-time resident in the U.S., albeit without legal status, returning to Guinea and being abandoned, and stranded, by their spouse. Two of the cases involve women sent by the husbands for "vacations," in one case the wife was deported. In all three cases, the husband gained legal status in the U.S. through marriage to an American citizen -- no doubt for immigration purposes -- but, having gained status, did not process the paperwork to legalize his "real" wife. A situation corollary to the errant spouse marrying for immigration benefit is the spouse who finds an actual partner in the U.S., while the former Guinean partner is deported from the U.S., or for other reasons returns to Guinea. In several cases encountered by Post, the American-born children are abandoned to a life in Guinea by the parent who remarried in the U.S. One teen-age American-born girl who insisted that her Guinean father allow her to live with her mother in the U.S. was sent to the U.S. by her father and was subsequently kicked out of the mother's house and is currently in jail for shoplifting. Her brother, who likewise insisted the father send him to live with his mother, was also kicked out of the mother's house and is now a ward of the state of New York. -------------- STAFFING AND TRAINING -------------- ¶15. In 2007, two of Post's long-time Consular LES staff were terminated for malfeasance; two others left their employment with the Embassy voluntarily, before the investigation could reach them. Post was left with one relatively new hire; two others were subsequently hired and have been on staff for a year and a half, and one LES staff member was added recently. LES staff have been taking qualifying courses on-line, and Post intends to send each of its LES consular staff to regional Posts for consultations in place of classroom training, as time permits. RASPOLIC