Ghana\u2019s Foreign Affairs Minister has announced that the country has temporarily closed its embassy in the US capital amid an investigation into an alleged visa scam.<\/p>\n
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said the embassy will be shut following the \u201cdamning findings\u201d of an audit team he put together to investigate alleged corruption at the Washington diplomatic mission.<\/p>\n
The statement added that the closure would last \u201ca few days\u201d until a \u201crestructuring and systems overhaul\u201d is finalised.<\/p>\n
According to Ablakwa, a locally recruited staff member and \u201ccollaborators\u201d were allegedly involved in a \u201cfraudulent\u201d scheme whereby they extracted money from visa and passport applicants.<\/p>\n
It is alleged that the scheme consisted of creating an unauthorised link on the embassy\u2019s website to redirect visa and passport applicants to a private firm where they were \u201ccharged extra for multiple services\u201d without the knowledge of the foreign ministry.<\/p>\n
Ablakwa added that the staff member \u201ckept the entire proceeds\u201d in their private account, and that the scheme had been going on for five years.<\/p>\n
Applicants seeking visas were charged unapproved fees ranging from almost $30 (\u00a322) to $60 by the private firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis conduct has been reported to the attorney-general for possible prosecution and retrieval of funds obtained through fraudulent schemes,\u201d Ablakwa added.<\/p>\n
As a result, foreign ministry staff in Washington \u201chave been recalled home\u201d and \u201call locally recruited staff at the embassy have been suspended\u201d, Ablakwa said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident [John] Mahama\u2019s government will continue to demonstrate zero tolerance for corruption, naked conflict of interest and blatant abuse of office.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ghana\u2019s Foreign Affairs Minister has announced that the country has temporarily closed its embassy in the US capital amid an investigation into an alleged visa scam. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said the embassy will be shut following the \u201cdamning findings\u201d of an audit team he put together to investigate alleged corruption at the Washington diplomatic mission. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}