The Administrative Court of Appeal has overturned a ruling that a Nigerian man’s marriage to a Cypriot woman was a sham, finding that immigration authorities failed to properly assess evidence including a joint bank account and the reasons the couple did not live together.
The woman had kept the marriage secret from her family, who disapproved of the relationship because of her husband’s nationality.
The appeal concerned only the decision that the marriage was a sham. The man did not specifically challenge the lower court’s ruling on his designation as a prohibited immigrant or the deportation and detention orders against him, so those findings stand.
The couple married in September 2019. In November 2022, the director of the Civil Registry and Migration Department wrote to the man to say his marriage had been judged a sham. The decision cited the couple not living together, the absence of shared obligations arising from the marriage, contradictions in their statements, alleged problems with his residence permit, and other information that the authorities said raised suspicions.
In April 2023, the authorities declared him a prohibited immigrant and issued deportation and detention orders against him. He challenged both the sham marriage decision and those measures, but the Administrative Court, hearing the two cases together, dismissed them on 11 October 2023. He appealed, arguing that the authorities had not carried out the necessary inquiries.
Evidence overlooked
The appeal court found that the authorities had carried out checks and interviewed both spouses, but had not properly assessed all the information before them.
It gave particular weight to separate interviews with the couple on 20 February 2021, in which no contradictions were found. The woman explained then that her family did not know about the marriage because they disapproved of the relationship, and that she wanted to keep it secret. In a follow-up check, the owner of the home where they said they lived confirmed that the woman ran the household, and another tenant confirmed by phone that the couple lived together. The committee’s minutes at the time recorded that their harmonious life together was not in doubt.
At a further check in March 2022, the couple were not found at their declared address. The man said he still lived there, while his wife said they did not live together, as she was living with her parents so as not to reveal the marriage to her family, but that she visited him almost every day. The authorities also found that he lived with compatriots and that the couple had no shared social or financial obligations.
In a letter to the Interior Minister dated 1 August 2022, the woman’s parents said their daughter had married the man in secret a few days before leaving for the United Kingdom, and that the family knew nothing of the relationship. They said they believed she had been exploited and asked for his residence permit to be revoked.
The appeal court said the letter also needed to be assessed from a different angle, as it confirmed both the marriage and the woman’s emotional bond with her husband. The family’s strong reaction and their attempt to have his permit revoked may have supported the reasons she gave for keeping the marriage secret, it said.
The court also found that the authorities had not considered a more recent address the man gave in an application in June 2022, even though it was before them when an advisory committee met on 3 November 2022 and when the decision was issued on 8 November 2022.
A statement from the couple’s joint savings account, submitted with the same application, did not appear to have been taken into account or properly investigated, the court said.
It also rejected the authorities’ reliance on alleged problems with his residence permit, noting that the file showed he had applied in time and in the proper form to regularise his stay. An earlier application for international protection, which was rejected, could not on its own indicate that the marriage that followed was a sham, it said.
“The administration’s conclusion on the sham nature of the appellant’s marriage was not reasonably reached,” the judgment said.
The court upheld the appeal, overturned the lower court’s ruling on the issue and annulled the decision declaring the marriage a sham. It awarded the man 3,000 euros in costs plus VAT against the Republic of Cyprus.
