The French Ambassador, Anne Sophie-Avé, said that scammers are buying visa application slots for France for GHS 70 and then reselling them to unsuspecting victims for GHS 800.
She stated that Ghanaians keep troubling her with visa acquisition. She said that the French Consulate, not the Embassy or the French ambassador, was responsible for immigration services and that the Consulate uses an online platform to process travel permits without requiring any human intervention.
“Stop harassing me for visas I’m not the consul. People come at me night and day on my phone as well… I don’t know how they manage to get my WhatsApp, and they call me in the middle of the night. It’s crazy. But I understand where they come from. I mean, you need to travel; you have an appointment, you have consent, you have a business meeting, and then you apply for a visa, and there is no appointment, no slot.”
Speaking to the host of DaybreakHitz on Hitz FM, Andy Dosty, Madam Sophie-Avé said revealed a fraudulent practice wherein people buy a slot using a fake passport number and a name, then sell them back.
“There are many reasons for that, which will not console you at all, but it will explain a bit: One is that the number of requests has increased dramatically, so the size of the desk that is providing and studying the application is not enough because it went from 4000 a year to 7000 to 10,000 a year… and the other thing is scammers; some people are buying a slot to sell them back; they were using insiders who were on their mobile phones refreshing the VFS website until there was a slot available; they will buy it with a fake passport number and a name, pay GHS70 to book that slot, and then they will sell it back for GHS800,” she added
