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A former North Korean diplomat who served in Tanzania from 1997 to 2001 has been expelled from the country under a Prohibited Immigrant (PI) note for using various forged passports and suspected involvement in illegal business activities.
Reliable sources told The Guardian yesterday that although Sungguk Kang’s tour of duty as his country’s economic councilor in Tanzania officially ended in 2001, he had been using at least four different forged passports - with different names, numbers and dates of birth – to regularly re-enter the country from 2006 until his formal expulsion on February 23 this year.
This was after the Immigration Services Department had identified the 58-year old Kang as a prominent North Korean businessman with supposed diplomatic status who ran several businesses from his base in Guangzhou, China.
The acting Commissioner of Immigration (Border Management and Control), Wilson Bambaganya, said that immigration officers with support from security officers had been watching Kang closely for sometime and observed his various violations of both national and international laws.
“We (Immigration) gathered information about his habit of changing passports with fake names, different dates of births and numbers,” Bambaganya said. “We asked ourselves what his motives were for constantly forging those details, and we realised that for a person of his status to do such things, he must be engaged in some illegal business, although we couldn’t establish exactly what business.”
When Kang was recently interrogated by immigration officers, he failed to produce any traceable legal business links, which only served to raise more suspicions about him, the senior immigration department official said.
“We even tried to communicate with his country’s embassy here in Tanzania, but they also said they had no proper information about Kang and his current businesses. So we finally decided to expel him via a PI note,” Bambaganya explained.
He added: “Even if he (Kang) was a genuine businessman in China or anywhere else, here in our country we have concluded that he was dealing in illegal business activities.”
Investigations established that between 2004 and 2006, Kang used a forged passport with number 190210198 and under the fake name of Songguk Hong, showing he was born on May, 19, 1957.
Between 2010 and 2013, Kang - who was once reportedly named as a ‘Hero of North Korea’ by the country’s former leader Kim Jung Il for apparently donating millions of dollars - held another passport with number 290110079, under the name of Kongguk Hong (also fake), and showing his date of birth as May 17, 1959.
Again last year, Kang is said to have held yet another passport - with number 563410045, under the name of Theo Hong, and showing date of birth as May 17, 1959.
And when he entered Tanzania on January 15 this year, he had a fourth different passport - number 7453101101, under the name Thaeo Hong, date of birth May, 17, 1969.
Apart from this case in Tanzania, there have been reports of other North Korean diplomats being involved in illegal business activities like the smuggling of rhino horn, gold, and hard liquor involving countries like South Africa, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The BBC and other reputable media outlets reported in December last year that a North Korean diplomat named Park Chol-jun had been expelled from South Africa for illegal rhino horn trading.
The reports said the man was arrested while driving a car with South African diplomatic registration and at least 4.5 kilograms of rhino horn plus $99,300 in cash stashed inside.
In March last year, Bangladesh expelled Son Young-nam, First Secretary of North Korea’s embassy in the capital Dhaka, after catching him as he tried to smuggle 27 kilos of gold into the country.
The media reported that Son Young-nam was stopped as he arrived in Bangladesh via Singapore and released later without being charged, according to diplomatic protocol. But customs officials said it was a “clear case of smuggling”.
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