MUSINA - The South African Department of Home Affairs this week smashed a syndicate of criminals, who had been making huge profits from the arranging of marriages involving, among others, illegal immigrants from various African states.

During a raid in Musina on Tuesday, a special task force arrested 15 people, including three Pakistanis, four Bangladeshis and two Zimbabweans, who were directly involved.

According to Home Affairs spokesperson Leslie Mashokwe, the initial investigations revealed a thriving trade in fraudulent identity documents, passports and marriage certificates. In many cases, the victims were innocent women, who were unaware of the fact that they were "married" to men they had been associated with.

Some so-called marriages were registered in Zimbabwe, and the couples involved often managed to pass the scrutiny of border post officials, because their travel documents and marriage certifcates were seemingly legal.

Since the launch of the “Check your marital status” campaign, 431 fraudulent marriages have already been exposed, Mashokwe pointed out. So far, 6 169 women have approached the department to verify their marital status, he said.

An apparently low fraud figure in Limpopo aroused the suspicions of the department, and subsequent inquiries revealed a huge can of worms, with a few immigration officials involved in bribery.

A Pakistani citizen, known as Yussuf Ali had, for instance, registered business enterprises in Limpopo in his wife’s name. Yet, the young woman concerned never even knew she was “married” to him. Ali and several others are to be summarily deported, in terms of legislation in South Africa, which prohibits anyone found in possession of false identity and other documents from ever entering the country again.

A senior department investigator said it has now become clear that a huge number of marriages in the so-called apartheid homelands (Bantustans) were never properly registered or captured on data systems. The fraudsters, who were able to use many defunct documents for their own purposes, had exploited this fact effectively.

"These facts should serve as a wake-up call to women, in particular, to check whether their marriages are properly registered,” Mashokwe said.