A THOUSAND successful asylum applicants face a review of their cases after the doctor who gave expert evidence at their hearings admitted yesterday that he was really a former taxi driver with no medical qualifications.

Barian Baluchi, a career fraudster who used a string of fake qualifications to set himself up as a leading clinician, was behind bars last night after conning more than £1.5 million from the Government, leading charities and patients.

Using fictitious qualifications Baluchi set himself up as an expert counsellor, neuropsychiatrist, plastic surgeon and even a professor who had supposedly trained at Harvard and Oxford. Baluchi also repeatedly gave evidence in court. In one case he was involved in, a sex attacker was jailed for life at Birmingham Crown Court in 2003.

He also frequently gave expert testimony at the Immigration Appeals Tribunal and prepared hundreds of often critical reports about the mental trauma asylum-seekers would suffer if they were sent home.

Baluchi became so confident in his scam that he even operated on patients.

The Home Office said last night that no comment would be made on a possible review of cases involving Baluchi until after he is sentenced next week.

Baluchi, who claimed to be an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder, is understood to have written reports on at least 1,500 asylum-seekers, of whom an estimated 1,000 were allowed to stay in Britain. He acted as a government adviser on health policy for asylum-seekers and received Home Office funding for his clinic in Central London.

He is also the author of a widely read book that calls for a huge cash boost for psychiatric care for refugees. His name is also included in the 2003 Directory of Expert Witnesses, published by the Law Society, which is used widely by the legal profession when members look for specialists.

Baluchi, a twice-married father of two, admitted a total of 30 charges just minutes before his trial was due to start yesterday at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court. The offences, committed between December 1998 and August 2003, include twelve of obtaining a money transfer by deception, three of committing an act intended to pervert the course of public justice, two of procuring a registration by making false declarations, one of supplying false and misleading information to the Charity Commission, and a string of others involving perjury, other deception charges, causing actual bodily harm, administering a medicinal product, possessing a Class A drug, and having Class B drugs with intent to supply.

He arrived in Britain in 1980, and married his first wife three years later, providing him with a coveted “indefinite leave to remain” stamp in his passport. Even after they divorced in 1990, she remained his most loyal admirer and unwittingly went on to help him to build his illicit medical practice by helping him to prepare successful grant applications.

After dabbling in jobs as a cabbie, a waiter, an employee with an import and export company, and shift work with a cleaning firm, Baluchi struck upon an illicit career in medicine in the 1990s.

He is understood to have registered with the General Medical Council (GMC) in 1998 under EU procedures. He is thought to have told the GMC that he qualified as a doctor and a psychiatrist in Madrid in the 1980s under the name of Antonio Carrillo-Gómez. Detectives from Scotland Yard have contacted a psychiatrist called Antonio Carrillo-Gómez who lives and works in Madrid.

Baluchi, after getting his first wife, who worked for the Migrant Resource Centre, to carry out research that subsequently led to him publishing a study of refugees, milked her experience to prepare grant applications after conning the Charity Commission into giving him charitable status.

He is understood to have pocketed some £440,000 in grants, including two of £30,000 from the Tudor Trust. He also targeted the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the King’s Fund, and the Baring Foundation as well as other charities and Barking council, the Department of Health and the Home Office.

As his unwarranted reputation grew, he realised that another source of cash was the legal profession. His earnings as an expert witness in court were said to exceed £375,000.

DOCTORED QUALIFICATIONS

• Michael Harris, from St Helens, Merseyside, was jailed in 1999 for pretending to be a top heart surgeon and administering drugs to a man who was dying of cancer. A college dropout, his only qualification was a Boy Scout’s first aid badge
• Matthew Brafman, an American, was jailed in 1994 for forging a degree certificate and references to lie his way into a job as a hospital doctor, treating more than 40 patients. The General Medical Council failed to spot that the medical college in Alabama where Mr Brafman claimed to have trained did not exist
• Mohammad Saeed built up a large practice and worked as a GP for 30 years, despite having no qualifications. Prescriptions included creosote, shampoo and suppositories — to be taken orally
• Godwin Onubogu was jailed in 1998 after subjecting hundreds of women to worthless tests for sexually transmitted diseases from his “clinical laboratory” in South London. Although barely educated, he had also made thousands of pounds by posing as an expert witness for motorists in drink-drive cases

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