{"id":38141,"date":"2014-01-24T14:02:26","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T14:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=0e8df0a31b721d3763d0947938c0f8a1"},"modified":"2014-01-24T14:02:26","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T14:02:26","slug":"news-story-couple-jailed-over-south-london-sham-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=38141","title":{"rendered":"News story: Couple jailed over South London sham marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Pakistan national Arfat Hussain, 24, and Bulgarian \u201cbride\u201d Aneta Kaleeva, 25, were arrested by Home Office Immigration Enforcement officers moments before their ceremony was due to take place on 3 January 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Officers were called in after register office staff raised suspicions about the couple, who noticed there was little interaction between the pair.  <\/p>\n<p>Croydon Crown Court heard Kaleeva, of Garner Road in Walthamstow, had previously attempted to marry a 28-year-old Bangladeshi man whose leave to remain had been curtailed. That marriage was cancelled at the last minute and he voluntarily departed the UK shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>Hussain, of Selkirk Road in Tooting, was attempting to marry Kaleeva in order to gain leave to remain in the UK as the spouse of an EEA national.<\/p>\n<p>The couple both admitted perjury charges during a trial at Croydon Crown Court yesterday (Wednesday 22 January) and were sentenced to eight months imprisonment.  The judge ordered two further charges of facilitation to remain on file.<\/p>\n<p>Hannah Shirley, from the Home Office Immigration Enforcement Criminal Investigations team, said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>We are working closely with registrars to clamp down on sham weddings and civil partnerships. These convictions are examples of the success that we are having.<\/p>\n<p class=\"last-child\">Where there are suspicions that a relationship may not be genuine we will investigate and, if necessary, intervene to stop it happening.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A sham marriage typically occurs when a non-European national marries someone from the European Economic Area as a means of attempting to gain long-term residency and the right to work and claim benefits in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>The Home Office\u2019s Immigration Enforcement Criminal Investigations team consists of specialist trained immigration officers and seconded police who investigate organised immigration crime.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone with information about suspected immigration abuse can contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 anonymously or visit http:\/\/www.crimestoppers-uk.org.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple have been jailed for attempting to enter into a sham marriage at Morden Register Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}