Comoros document photos online

In 2008 the tiny Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros began selling its passports to Gulf states, which used them to give documents to tens of thousands of stateless "Bidoon" Arabs. A parliamentary inquiry later found roughly 48,000 passports were issued and up to $100 million vanished. The scheme became one of history's most notorious citizenship-document scandals: in 2022 the State Security Court sentenced former president Ahmed Abdallah Sambi to life imprisonment for high treason. The cruel twist? Many of the new Comorian passports explicitly barred their holders from ever entering Comoros itself.

• Passport scandal Between 2008 and 2018 Comoros ran an "economic citizenship" scheme that issued roughly 48,000 passports, many to stateless Gulf Arabs who were forbidden from ever setting foot on the islands whose nationality they held.
• High treason In 2022 a special State Security Court whose verdicts cannot be appealed sentenced former president Ahmed Abdallah Sambi to life imprisonment for orchestrating the passport-selling programme.
• Passport power As of the 2025 Henley Passport Index the Comorian passport ranked around 82nd, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to only about 50 destinations.
• Most open border Despite its weak passport, Comoros topped the 2025 Henley Openness Index, admitting citizens of nearly every nation on earth without a prior visa.
• Currency The Comorian franc is pegged to the euro at the oddly precise rate of 491.96775 francs to one euro, yet its banknotes are printed thousands of kilometres away by the Banque de France.
• Phantom coins The franc is officially divided into 100 centimes, but not a single centime coin has ever been minted in the currency's history.
• Living fossil Comoros is the home of the coelacanth, a fish believed extinct for 65 million years until rediscovered alive; locals call it gombessa and it names the national football team, Les Coelacanthes.
• Coup capital Since independence in 1975 Comoros has endured more than 20 coups or attempted coups, several led by French mercenary Bob Denard, earning it the nickname "the coup-coup islands."
• Split nation When Comoros declared independence in 1975, the island of Mayotte voted to stay French and remains a French territory to this day, though Comoros still claims it as its own.