Fake passport factory in suburban unit

Amandale Ave in Mt Albert is half a world away from the murky politics of the Middle East. But it has become embroiled in the region's intrigue through the discovery of a massive passport forgery operation in a suburban unit.

Refugees Fahad Jaber Ajeil, 29, from Iraq, and Riyad Hamied Sultan, 30, from Kuwait, were accused of possessing implements for forgery, forging documents, possessing a false passport, altering documents, making documents by reproduction and conspiracy to commit forgery.

A third man, Dr Salam Abu-Shaaban, a shadowy but influential figure in Kuwait, was also named in the conspiracy charge in his absence.

The Crown maintained that the manufacturing operation produced - or was in the process of producing - hundreds of passports and other travel documents relating to 17 different countries, including Australia, Bolivia, El Salvador, Colombia, Yemen and Liberia.

At least 50 had already been delivered, it was claimed.

Prosecutor Mina Wharepouri alleged at the start of the trial that Ajeil and Sultan were paid for their handiwork.

Despite heightened security around the world, the motive for people to use false passports to cross borders illegally was left open.

"The Crown doesn't have to prove why people who ordered these documents needed them or what they intended to do with them.

"You might ask yourselves why their customers, those who requested the completely false documents that were produced, why would they want to move between borders of countries without detection? In some instances, why would they require several false passports?"

The police national security investigation team, which has since been renamed the metro special investigation unit, became involved after Customs officials spotted two packages in May and September last year.

One contained two Australian passports, one void and the other cancelled. The other contained a Colombian passport, plus photos and biographical details of a woman with an Arab name.

When police raided Ajeil's Mt Albert unit, they found a virtual manufacturing plant, complete with all the high-tech wizardry needed for altering and manipulating passports and other documents.

One charge records that the search team located a computer, paper, glue, ink, needles, thread, drills, guillotine, printers paste, invisible ink, laminating pouches, stencil remover gel and ultraviolet light.

The police also found passport covers for various nations, parts of passports that had been altered, and passports with the biosecurity page removed.

Judge Nicola Mathers suppressed details of precisely how the documents were made.

Ajeil's defence maintained that a man called Abu Aziz, a clansman of Ajeil's from Iraq who is no longer in this country, was responsible for setting him up.

Sultan's defence was that he was not involved in any way.

It took police nine months of patiently analysing the computer's hard-drive data and having scores of emails translated from Arabic before they realised the size of the enterprise.

It was, as Mr Wharepouri told the jury, "on a scale never before seen in this country".

What became clear was that the mastermind at the hub, orchestrating the enterprise, was a well-connected Middle Eastern man called Dr Abu-Shaaban.


The detective in charge of the case, Detective Simon Williamson, told the jury that his superiors refused to allow him to go to Kuwait to investigate Abu-Shaaban's involvement and, "hard to believe", the Kuwaitis did not ask for his help.

"There were decisions made by people higher than myself what should and should not be done in relation to Mr Abu-Shaaban, and I firmly was not going to Kuwait to execute a search warrant," he said.

Abu-Shaaban's email address suggested he was connected with the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but an article in the Arab Times, which was shown to the jury, said he was the Liberian consul to Saudi Arabia.

A court exhibit also suggested that he held a diplomatic passport as a Bolivian trade attache.

Evidence was given that he claimed to be the consul for six or seven nations and issued passports from his office in Kuwait for a number of countries, including Bolivia, El Salvador and other parts of Latin America.

Another exhibit showed that he was named as the Kuwaiti member on a worldwide medical practitioners list.

The Arab Times article said that, as Liberian consul to Saudi Arabia, he had offered to help to solve the problem of the stateless Bedouins who live between Kuwait and Iraq by giving them Liberian passports for 1250 Kuwaiti dinars ($6100).

Ajeil's lawyer, Anthony Rogers, said the NZ police had enough information to lead a team straight to Abu-Shaaban's office door.

It was "inconceivable" that the passports forgery issue had not been raised at the very highest levels of Government.

But the reason for the Prime Minister's "deafening silence", he told the jury, compared with her stance over the Israeli passport scandal, was that New Zealand did not have the multimillion-dollar sheep trade with Israel that it did with Kuwait.

Sultan's lawyer, David Niven, said outside court that the quality of the documents produced was poor and they were probably to help members of the persecuted Bedouins get to another country where they could claim refugee status.

Prosecutor Ross Burns said the pair were "exploiting the exploited" for money, not trying to help the Bedouin.

The jury retired on Monday morning and returned with its verdicts late yesterday afternoon.

The verdicts

FAHAD AJEIL

* Found guilty on 14 counts including possession of items capable of forging documents and conspiracy to commit forgery. Cleared on five charges.

RIYAD SULTAN

* Cleared of 16 charges but found guilty of conspiring to commit forgery.

Both remanded in custody by Judge Nicola Mathers for sentencing in Auckland District Court in December.

Kuwaiti Dr Salam Abu-Shaaban named in conspiracy charge but not on trial.