{"id":26245,"date":"2018-03-23T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/?p=26245"},"modified":"2020-02-03T10:03:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T10:03:24","slug":"comoros-passport-scheme-was-unlawful-abused-by-mafia-networks-report-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/comoros-passport-scheme-was-unlawful-abused-by-mafia-networks-report-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Comoros passport scheme was unlawful, abused by &#8216;mafia&#8217; networks &#8211; report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By David Lewis, Ali Amir Ahmed<\/p>\n<p>NAIROBI\/MORONI (Reuters) &#8211; A programme to sell Comoros Islands citizenship to fund development resulted in thousands of passports being sold outside official channels via \u201cmafia\u201d networks and up to $100 million of revenues went missing, according to a report by the small Indian Ocean state\u2019s parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The report, produced by a parliamentary commission set up in June 2017 to investigate the citizenship programme, also said former presidents Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi and Ikililou Dhoinine, who were in power when the alleged abuses took place, were \u201csuspected of the embezzlement of public funds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The programme was flawed from its inception and the current Comoros government should seek international help to recover the missing funds and take officials involved to court, the report concluded.<\/p>\n<p>In a video posted on Facebook, Sambi rejected all accusations against him, saying they had been fabricated to discredit him. He didn\u2019t respond to a request for further comment.<\/p>\n<p>Read further: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-comoros-passports-exclusive\/exclusive-comoros-passport-scheme-was-unlawful-abused-by-mafia-networks-report-idUSKBN1GZ37H\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-comoros-passports-exclusive\/exclusive-comoros-passport-scheme-was-unlawful-abused-by-mafia-networks-report-idUSKBN1GZ37H<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By David Lewis, Ali Amir Ahmed NAIROBI\/MORONI (Reuters) &#8211; A programme to sell Comoros Islands citizenship to fund development resulted in thousands of passports being sold outside official channels via \u201cmafia\u201d networks and up to $100 million of revenues went missing, according to a report by the small Indian Ocean state\u2019s parliament. The report, produced [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-comoros","type-news-articles","item-year-642","item-theme-id-documents-and-passports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26248,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26245\/revisions\/26248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}