A fake United States embassy was busted today by authorities in Ghana.
The embassy in the capital Accra run by a criminal network for a decade has been issuing illegally obtained authentic visas, the U.S. State Department said.
The ’embassy’ was housed in a run-down, pink two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof and flew a U.S. flag outside.
Inside the ’embassy’ hung a portrait of President Barack Obama.
“It was not operated by the United States government, but by figures from both Ghanaian and Turkish organised crime rings and a Ghanaian attorney practicing immigration and criminal law,” the State Department said in a statement released late on Friday
The statement did not say how the gang obtained the authentic visas. And the State Department did not say how many people were believed to have illegally entered the United States and other countries using visas issued by the crime ring, which used bribery to operate unhindered.
“The criminals running the operation were able to pay off corrupt officials to look the other way, as well as obtain legitimate blank documents to be doctored,” the statement said.
There was no immediate comment from Ghana’s Criminal Investigations Division.