German embassies in China, Egypt, Moldova and Russia issued some 1,500 visas to people holding fake identity documents, the the foreign ministry said on Monday.
‘We have found roughly 1,500 cases of abuse regarding visa applications in the last two years,’ foreign ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said, confirming press reports.
‘In Moscow there were 1,259 cases, in Chisinau 70 cases, in Shanghai 30 and in Cairo investigations are still ongoing but we have so far identified 132 cases,’ he added.
Jaeger said the ministry had taken disciplinary steps against staff members implicated in the visa fraud, adding that everywhere except in Moldova
, these were locals employed by the missions and not members of the German diplomatic corps.
‘In all cases criminal, disciplinary and labour steps have been taken,’ he said.
The German press on Monday drew parallels between the affair and a visa scandal that shook the government of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder two years ago, but Jaeger denied that the latest cases pointed to serious problems at German embassies around the world.
‘I do not want to diminish these matters—every case is one too many—but we must accept that there will be cases like this and we make very great efforts to limit such irregularities as far as possible.’
Der Spiegel news magazine reported on Monday that the corruption at the Russian embassy was discovered after police apprehended 153 people who travelled to Germany from Russia using visas stamped into fake passports.
It said police officers and a diplomat who have been dispatched to the German embassy in Cairo to investigate similar problems there had so far checked 10,000 visa applications, uncovering fraud in 132 cases.
The team still had to revise some 40,000 applications and the ministry feared that ‘there could be more such cases still,’ Der Spiegel quoted a ministry official as saying.
It said six Egyptian staff members had been identified in the probe and that the ministry found it worrying that this could happen ‘in a country where there are so many Islamists.’
In 2005, Berlin was hit by a major immigration scandal that dented the reputation of the then foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, when it emerged that relaxing the rules for issuing visas led to tens of thousands of eastern Europeans pouring into Germany between 2000 and 2003.
The Christian Democrats, who were then in opposition but are now part of the ruling coalition, charged that the revised visa system was left open to exploitation by people smugglers who brought in women forced into prostitution, drug dealers and workers seeking illegal employment.
Source: AFP
