SENTENCED TO FOUR YEARS IN UNITED KINGDOM PRISON:
NIGERIAN Retired FORMER Premier League Goalkeeper, ABDUL AZEEZA Jailed in London…For Possessing FAKE British Passport, Bogus Residency Permit
*Investigators Discovered ex-Nigerian Professional footballer’s house used as factory in producing false traveling documents
* Pleads GUILTY to TWO counts of possessing an Identity document with improper intent, possessing equipment with intention of making fake documents
*Co-criminals’ Fate: Alfred Adekoya sentenced to 40 months and two weeks in custody after pleading guilty to conspiracy to manufacture a fake document, Victor Ariyo-Spiritual Service/Money Laundering specialist bags THREE Years in Jail, Luke Nkanta-Courier sentenced to 16 Months in Prison
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BY MUMUNI ORIOLA/SPORTS CORRESPONDENT, UNITED KINGDOM
HE WAS A FAMILIAR FACE IN NIGERIA’S premier league in the late 80’s and early 90’s. He featured in the Nigerian Premiership league, but retired on time after he got injured as a goal-keeper. ABDUL AZEEZA seems to have forgotten how he rose through the ranks of Nigerian football to become a celebrity. It soon came to the fore that his enviable lifestyle in the streets of United Kingdom was based on ‘slush’ funds that he had accrued from allegedly engaging in illegal traveling documentation for immigrants wishing to become British citizens.
Based on intelligence gathering, Azeeza was tracked, arrested, prosecuted, found guilty and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment after the court heard that “it was at his address” that the factory producing the false documents was found.
This Nigerian, an ex-professional footballer, who once represented a club in the Nigerian equivalent of the Premier League before retiring through injury in 1996, was found with a false passport in his back pocket, a residency card in his wallet and “all the implements of making them on the kitchen table”.
Going by the documents confiscated from the former goalkeeper, 58, recovered from him in his house are: Items needed to make fake documents, including specially adapted tools for dismantling passports, threads for stitching, paint thinners and laminate, were found at his home in Missenden, Inville Road, south London.
Azeeza pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing an identity document with improper intent and possessing equipment with the intention of making fake documents. His co-crime partners are: Alfred Adekoya, of Kingslake Street, London, was sentenced to 40 months and two weeks in custody after pleading guilty to conspiracy to manufacture a fake document.
Adekoya, 47, had been seen frequenting Azeeza’s address, and was found with three counterfeit British passports on his arrest. Victor Ariyo, of Rye Hill Park, London, acted as a go-between for Kanaventi and Adekoya, the court heard.
In a police interview Ariyo, 53, said he was a go-between for “a spiritual service, and that is why money passed through his account”. But he admitted conspiracy to manufacture a fake document and money laundering, and was sentenced to three years in custody.
Luke Nkanta, who acted as a courier, was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment after pleading guilty to possession of an identity document with improper intention. The court heard that in June 2017 Nkanta, 29, met Adekoya outside the Coral bookmakers in Woolwich, east London.
When Nkanta, of Wordsworth House, Woolwich, was searched shortly afterwards, officers found a counterfeit passport, an order sheet for the passport and a copy of the photograph used in the document.
Paul Kanaventi, 37, of Forster Street, Nottingham, pleaded guilty to converting criminal property after he allowed Steven Kanaventi to use his bank account, and set up an email address in his name, and was jailed for nine months.
He said he did not know that the money going through the bank account was being used for criminal purposes, but admitted suspecting it. Madalitso Majawa, 33, of Ombersley Close, Redditch, was sentenced to six months imprisonment after pleading guilty to possession of an identity document with improper intent.
CFI inspector Ben Thomas said: “The criminal business that Kanaventi and Adekoya were running was designed to undermine the fundamental immigration rule that if you have no legal status in the UK, you have no right to work.
“Their customers hoped that the fake documents would be enough to convince prospective employers that they were entitled to work, in turn allowing them to a build a life for themselves in the UK to which they were simply not entitled.
“By bringing Kanaventi, Adekoya and their associates to justice we have stopped a concerted, systematic and financially motivated assault on the UK’s immigration system.”
#Additional Reports by The Huffington Post
