A Nigerian man, Jelili Adesanya, a Home Office worker in the United Kingdom, took a desperate step in making sure his own daughter gets a British visa by getting wedded to her in a marriage scam that has been uncovered by the UK authorities.
According to the Daily Mail, the extraordinary scam was executed by Adesanya while ministers turned a blind eye.
Mr Adesanya, 54, has lived in Britain for more than 30 years and holds a British passport, but wanted his daughter, her husband and their four sons to join him from Nigeria.
To achieve his aim, he faked a wedding ceremony complete with a photograph of the happy 'couple' which helped fool immigration officials that his daughter, Karimotu Adenike, was really his wife. Adenike, who is in her mid-30s, was duly granted permission to live in the UK.
The pair are waiting for her to be granted a permanent right to remain before they undergo a quiet divorce and attempt to bring the rest of her family here. It is expected she would try to remarry her real husband to get them all visas.
A whistle-blower sent letters to the High Commission in Lagos and the UK Border Agency including specific details such as names, addresses, passport numbers and even a copy of the wedding photograph.
When there was no response, he sent emails to then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and ministers Vernon Coaker and Phil Woolas on February 1 this year. He heard nothing.
Mr Adesanya, who went to Britain in 1976, flew back to Nigeria on May 29, 2007, and held the bogus wedding ceremony a few days later at a register office in Ikorodu, Lagos.
A source said:
They paid people to attend the wedding so that the British High Commission in Lagos would believe it was genuine. The commission then gave Karimotu Adenike a two-year settlement visa in October 2007.
On her settlement visa application form, of course, she did not mention that she already had a husband and four children.
Mr Adesanya, who lives with his daughter in Dagenham, Essex, vehemently denied the plot and said he had never been questioned about the allegations.
He said:
Married my own daughter? I have never heard anything like this in my life. I deny it. She is my wife, not my daughter.
However, asked to confirm his 'wife's' date of birth, he said he did not know without checking her passport, and refused to allow her to speak for herself.
Unknown to him, his daughter had confirmed the arrangement when she told a friend she would shortly apply for her own British passport and 'divorce daddy'.
The British are not taking the case lightly as they have sworn to make sure all illegal residents are deported to their countries. Jonathan Sedgwick, from the UK Border Agency, said:
These individuals are already under investigation, and I want to make it clear that abuse of our immigration laws will not be tolerated.
If we identify marriages which we believe are not genuine, we will challenge them and prosecute where appropriate.
We are determined to send home any foreign nationals convicted of these types of crimes once they have served their sentences.
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