After an investigation was carried over the issue of corruption at the Immigration New Zealand office in New Delhi, the capital of India, two locally employed staffs of the office were forced to resign and a disciplinary action is being taken against the third.
Andrew Annakan, Head of INZ, said that in January, the service became aware regarding the allegations that claimed dishonesty among staffs at their office in New Delhi through its branch manager. Following this, an internal investigator went to India and began a comprehensive inquiry.
Annakin said that the investigator who flew to India found that three locally engaged visa officers were involved in irregular processing of work and visitor visa applications for New Zealand. However, he did not mention whether the officers did all this for money.
Annakin said that two of the staff immediately left the job when met head-on and disciplinary proceedings have started against the third locally hired officer involved in the issue. He said that the at present, internal investigation is in progress and when the process is over any criminal findings will be referred to the Indian diplomatic police for further investigation on the matter.
It should be noted that the involved visa officers were citizens of India. A former minister of immigration and an immigration consultant, Aussie Malcolm said that according to him employing local people in foreign countries for running visa services compromised the New Zealand government.
The former minister said that all this has happened due to hiring of local people who are not New Zealanders and who do not understand the ethics of New Zealand. He said that all this has been happening in New Delhi and Beijing. He is also irritated about the fact that nowadays they have started providing even non-English application forms.
However, Annakin was confident about the system and said that one must note that the whole issue came to light only due to the audit and verification systems in place in their office in New Delhi. He further went on t explain that all work in the office is carried out in the presence of closed circuit TV and is recorded also. Immigration manager or technical adviser make risk assessments on all applications, and case officers are randomly provided visa applications, and finally all visa decisions are cross-checked by a senior official before they are confirmed in the system, he explained