{"id":223617,"date":"2026-02-12T12:37:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T10:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-top-lesotho-home-affairs-officials-face-fraud-and-corruption-charges\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T12:37:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T10:37:33","slug":"lesotho-top-lesotho-home-affairs-officials-face-fraud-and-corruption-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-top-lesotho-home-affairs-officials-face-fraud-and-corruption-charges\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesotho: Top Lesotho Home Affairs Officials Face Fraud and Corruption Charges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"12\"><em> They are accused of unlawfully issuing asylum and refugee documents <\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"40\">The director of passport services at Lesotho&#8217;s Ministry of Home Affairs, Mpiko Rafono, and the acting commissioner of refugees, Nthatisi Thabane, have been charged with fraud, attempted fraud, and abuse of power for allegedly unlawfully issuing refugee documents to immigrants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"33\">The two first appeared in the Maseru Magistrates&#8217; Court on 27 January. On Tuesday they returned to court, where Asumani Saleh, an alleged beneficiary of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202602120066.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Lesotho\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/\">Lesotho<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They are accused of unlawfully issuing asylum and refugee documents The director of passport services at Lesotho&#8217;s Ministry of Home Affairs, Mpiko Rafono, and the acting commissioner of refugees, Nthatisi Thabane, have been charged with fraud, attempted fraud, and abuse of power for allegedly unlawfully issuing refugee documents to immigrants. The two first appeared in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":223618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00680746:3d2d94de0d6c50be04d003b768e33206:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1406],"tags":[6117,258,256,7578,4723,7127,8666,8849,4717,1407,257,6651,254,7319],"class_list":["post-223617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lesotho","tag-affairs","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-charges","tag-corruption","tag-face","tag-fraud","tag-home","tag-lesotho","tag-lesotho-news","tag-news","tag-officials","tag-south-africa-today","tag-top"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00680746:3d2d94de0d6c50be04d003b768e33206:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}