What is Bezness?
Definition of Bezness - Romance Scam, Marriage and Immigration Fraud
What is Bezness?
The term "Bezness" (also Beznezz, Besness, Bezzness, Beznes, Besnes) describes the pretention of love feelings by men toward women with the sole objective of gaining financial or material benefits and/or a residence permit in a western country.The word "Bezness" has its origin in the north-african country of Tunisia where it describes a kind of flirtatious behaviour of young men towards young women. "Bezness" has namely the connotation that the man is buttering up / fooling the woman by pretending love feelings that are not serious.
The word was introduced into the international public in the year of 1992 by the french-german-tunisian movie "Bezness" by the tunisian author Nouri Bouzid.
Bezness vs. other
types of scams and frauds
There have always been other terms describing deviations from the general morally or legally accepted behaviour in relationships in western societies, eg. immigration fraud, marriage fraud, romance scam, to just name a few.But since this phenomenon is not the same, although somehow related to those, the coining of a new term, Bezness, was needed to be able to properly address the specific problems that come with it.
Even more so, since the "classic" Bezness, which required one to visit the country of Tunisia, has, nowadays, spread to other countries, like Egypt, Morocco, or Turkey, and is, in the last years, also being accompanied by a so called "Online-Bezness", whose conduct is quite the same as the classical one, but starts in a different place - right in a person's own home from within a person's own device.
This takes "Bezness" to a new level, because it can now reach anyone anywhere anytime, while before, it could only affect those who went out into an holiday to other countries.
Short definitions
For reasons of differentiation between the terms, here are some definitions: Bezness is the pretense of love with the sole or main aim to gain an advantage for the partner who comes from a country with lower economic standing.
Marriage fraud is the process of obtaining a marriage in order to extort financial advantages from the spouse.
-> Bezness is different from marriage fraud because it can, but does not need to, contain the element of extortion of financial advantages. The financial advantage can, in fact, even be unimportant, when a residence permit is the main goal.
Romance Scam is proposing a marriage to someone without the real intent to marry him or her. Typically, a romance scammer will find lots of obstacles why the couple cannot actually meet in person, and all of these obstacles can only be removed with money - money that the scammed person will have to send to the scammer.
Romance scam occurs mainly in Online Relationships. It can involve identity theft: the scammer will then take up the identity of someone else to look more attractive or make a greater or more familiar impression and/or to hide his real name (then called Catfishing).
-> Bezness is different from romance scam in that with Bezness, the relationship is truely build up, the couple will meet in person and there is a good chance of a marriage taking place, however, all this is usually only made possible by the financial efforts of just one part of the couple - the western.
Immigration fraud is the process of actively trying to obtain a residence permit by unlawful procedures.
-> Bezness is different from immigration fraud because it can, but does not need to, contain the element of actively trying to obtain a residence permit in a western country.
In fact, the leverage is the relationship and rather than saying "I want to become a citizen of xxx", the beznesser can even resort to "We only can be together, when I come to (stay in) your country, although this is not what I want" and just imply that, for a life together, immigration on his part is a simple necessity (and not his strongest wish).
Immigration fraud by marriage ("sham marriage" or "fake marriage") also often contains the element of both partners knowing exactly what they are doing - one is getting his residence permit by marriage, the other is being paid for the marriage.
-> Not so with Bezness, where one part stays in the dark about the real goals of the other.
In other words - Bezness can be, but does not need to be, a part of all of the above cases.
Bezness is a confidence scheme where one thinks "I make you believe I love you and want to share my whole life with you, and for that I expect something from you in return".
Now, it is debateable that such relationships won't occur within the same country, in fact, it is likely that they do. What makes Bezness stand out, however, is the economic and cultural difference between the countries of origin of the partners.
The active, "beznessing", part has a clear idea about the "something" that he wants to get, it is money, it is a residence permit, it is physical relations, ideally all of it, but at least some of it. What he wants to give for that is ... just the words "I love you".
The passive, "being beznessed", part believes in a long term relationship and commitment based on love and will go to great lengths to make this happen.