Man who used false identity to obtain British citizenship loses appeal against deprivation

A man who was granted indefinite leave to remain following Home Office failings on his case, and who subsequently naturalised as a British citizen, has lost his appeal against a deprivation decision made by the Home Office when they found out he had been using a false identity the whole time. The case was heard by the Court of Appeal and is Onuzi v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1337. Our write up of the Upper Tribunal’s decision is here.

Background

The appellant is an Albanian national who claimed asylum on 28 November 1999 using a false identity, that of a Kosovan national. After a series of failings on the part of the Home Office relating to a decision to grant exceptional leave to remain, the appellant was granted indefinite leave to remain in the false identity on 17 May 2006.

He then naturalised as a British citizen on 25 April 2007, again using the false identity. The appellant ticked “no” to the question “Have you engaged in any other activities which might be relevant to the question of whether you are a person of good character?”. He also confirmed that all of the information given on the form was correct and that he understood that citizenship may be withdrawn if it was found to have been obtained by fraud, false representation or the concealment of any material fact.

In 2020 the Home Office discovered that the appellant was an Albanian national and he admitted that he had lied about his identity. The appellant asked for discretion to be exercised in his favour because he had a wife and three British citizen children in the UK.

On 4 November 2020 the appellant was told that he was being deprived of his British citizenship under section 40(3) of the British Nationality Act 1981.

The appeal

He appealed the decision and applying the case of Sleiman (deprivation of citizenship; conduct) [2017] UKUT 367 (IAC) (our write up), the First-tier Tribunal allowed the appeal on the basis that the use of the false identity was not directly material to the appellant’s grant of citizenship.

This was because the appellant was granted indefinite leave to remain based on a concession because of the delays and maladministration in his case. The tribunal considered that the previous deception could be considered irrelevant to the grant of citizenship.

The Home Secretary appealed to the Upper Tribunal, which allowed her appeal.

After the Upper Tribunal’s decision, the Court of Appeal had decided the case of Chaudhry v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 16, the latest in a series of decisions on the correct standard of review in deprivation cases. As set out at paragraph 54 there, this meant that the decision on the causation link between the deception and the naturalisation was reviewable on public law grounds, as was the decision on the Home Secretary’s exercise of discretion when making the deprivation decision.

The Court of Appeal agreed with the Upper Tribunal that

there was nothing in the decision-making history to break the causative link between the Appellant’s fraud and the grant of citizenship”. The court concluded that “There is no public law error in the conclusion of the SSHD’s decision-maker in 2020 that, had the truth been known in 2007, the Appellant would have been refused British citizenship on the grounds that he was not of good character. On the contrary, I do not see how any other conclusion would have been a realistic possibility.

The appeal was dismissed.