An investigation by renowned investigate journalist, David Hundeyin has exposed a dubious website charging Nigerian travelers N680,000 for a ‘document verification service’ to Dubai, purportedly for UAE visa applications.
The website, (https://documentverificationhub.ae), was introduced by Nigeria’s Minister of Communication and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, following the ministry’s announcement that the UAE had lifted its visa ban on Nigerians.
However, there has been no confirmation from UAE authorities regarding the lifting of the ban.
Hundeyin’s investigation found that the website’s domain does not follow the standard “.gov.ae” format of official UAE government sites and instead ends with “.ae”. The identity of the registrar of this controversial website, according to @scamadviser, is hiding their identity by using a paid proxy.
Further Findings by Hundeyin show that the proxy owner of the website is one Jean Geoffrion, a Canadian who is the CTO at a Spanish IT company called Global Voice Group, which according to its website, specialises in “provision of RegTech and Govtech solutions…domestic revenue mobilisation and regulatory compliance.”
“This company also appears to only do business in Africa and in fact much of its management team is African. So in summary, we have a website with a hidden owner contracting an IT middleman who specialises in “raising sustainable revenue” through high-traffic regulatory activities (such as visa applications) to operate the website on their behalf,” Hundeyin emphasised.
The site is hosted on an Amazon AWS server in Ireland, which is contrary to the UAE’s practice of hosting government websites on Middle East AWS servers. Payments on the site are processed through Flutterwave, and the fee for the visa service is around N680,000. This discrepancy has led to suspicions that the site may be a scam or an illicit financial operation.
Moreover, Parallel Facts, corroborating Hundeyin’s findings, confirmed that the website is not connected to the UAE government, accepts payment only in Naira, and is integrated with Flutterwave.
Despite these findings, the Nigerian government has yet to issue a disclaimer about the website, raising concerns that it may be a scam or an illicit financial operation.
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