False passport factory 'biggest ever seen in NZ'

Two Middle Eastern men have gone on trial charged with forging passports and other travel documents on "a scale never before seen in this country".

The Crown says hundreds of passports and other documents were either made by Fahad Jaber Ajeil and Riyad Hamied Sultan or were being made.

When police swooped on Ajeil's unit in Amandale Ave, Mt Albert, last October they allegedly found a sophisticated passport-manufacturing plant with false documents relating to 17 countries, including Australia, Bolivia, El Salvador, Yemen, and Liberia.

Eleven passports were partly completed, and one Australian passport was finished.

Police also found emails from a shadowy Middle Eastern figure, Dr Salam Abu-Shaaban, ordering 52 false passports from the pair.

They found, too, more than 200 images on a Photoshop computer program.

Ajeil is understood to be an Iraqi, and Sultan is a Kuwaiti. Both are 29.

In his opening address to Judge Nicola Mathers and a jury in the Auckland District Court yesterday, Crown prosecutor Mina Wharepouri said Abu-Shaaban was the overseas point of contact.

"It is clear that Abu-Shaaban was a major force behind Ajeil and Sultan's activities by obtaining orders overseas from those who wanted false documentation and then by placing those orders with the accused."

Mr Wharepouri said that one of the most significant documents found in the search was a completed false Australian passport.

The passport number belonged to an Australian woman, but the purported passport-holder was a middle-aged Middle Eastern man.

Mr Wharepouri said that while the passport was crude and unlikely to deceive a trained Australian immigration officer, officials from other countries might be taken in.

The holder of the false document could use it to board a plane and then dispose of it and claim refugee status when the plane landed.

Alternatively, the holder could attempt to use the passport to enter the country where the plane landed.

Mr Wharepouri said suspicions were aroused when Customs intercepted two packages.

One contained a stolen Bolivian passport plus photographs and personal details of another person.

The other had two Australian passports.

When police and Customs closed in, they found the high-tech manufacturing operation.

There were covers for passports of various nations, a forged Kuwaiti driver's licence, parts of passports which had been altered, and passports with the bio-security page removed.

A computer and scanner were also seized but at first the police did not realise their significance.

An examination of the computer revealed over 200 Photoshop documents relating to passports, travel documents and other forms of ID.

The Crown says Photoshop was used to manipulate and create new biosecurity pages for false passports.

Mr Wharepouri said there was a clear link between the electronic documents and the physical documents found by police.

There were also emails from Abu-Shaaban requesting production of passports and giving details of the people for whom they were intended.

With the information, the pair would generate false passports and forward them to Abu-Shaaban or directly to the customer.

Tools of the trade

* Fahad Jaber Ajeil and Riyad Hamied Sultan are accused of possession of implements for forgery, forging documents, possession of a false passport, altering documents, making documents by reproduction and conspiracy to commit forgery.

* One of the charges details the equipment allegedly capable of being used for forgery, including computer, glue, printers ink, needles, thread, drills, guillotine, printers pastes, invisible ink, laminating pouches and ultra violet light.