Damascus-SANA
The Ministry of Interior operates according to several procedures to combat crimes related to forgery and forgery of official documents and currency, which have spread as a result of the circumstances and repercussions of the terrorist war on Syria.
Head of the Anti-Counterfeiting, Forgery and Cash Smuggling Branch in Criminal Security, Colonel Waseem Maarouf Bayn, told SANA that the crimes of forgery operations, whether agencies, seals or official documents, are managed by gangs specialized in this field, where several gangs were arrested that manufacture seals and use them to ratify External and internal agencies, including seals of several ministries and embassies.
Maarouf added that several gangs were arrested for the crime of usurping real estate in Damascus and its countryside under false agencies or contracts of sale, relying on an identification certificate from the mayor bearing the property owner’s information, a false photo of the person, and false witnesses, and police seized the loss of identity to issue a card bearing the name of the owner of the property and the photo of the forged person.
Colonel Maarouf indicated that the Minister of Interior had issued a circular to all police units not to organize any seizure of identity loss (personal card) until after extracting the civil registry database for the person who lost the ID card and matching it with the person who wants to organize the seizure by the head of the police unit exclusively.
Maarouf added that an Iraqi national who impersonated an Iraqi diplomat had been arrested and had forged about 65 foreign agencies for Iraqi people with his knowledge of them and his knowledge of their possession of real estate in Syria, where he manufactured the seals he needed in Iraq, including the seals of the Iraqi embassy in Syria, the seals of the attestation department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the seals of the Directorate of Affairs Civil rights to be used in the sale and transfer of real estate ownership of Iraqi citizens in Syria.
Regarding forgery of car ownership, Maarouf indicated that several cars were seized, the transfer of their ownership forged under forged agencies, where the real owner is deceased or outside the country, as the number of forged agencies for transporting and selling cars has reached about 500 forged agencies during the past four years.
Imran Issa and Mada Alloush