Talk:Federal Office for Migration and Refugees
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2000-2018 Bribes for Asylum Scandal
[edit]I've started this section but I'd like to note what the German Wikipedia reports on it as of tonight. This is no small potatoes.
Scandal about manipulated asylum procedures On April 20, 2018 investigators searched the private apartment of the former head of the Bremen branch office of the Federal Office Ulrike B. on suspicion of bribery and gang enticement to abusive asylum application [8] in about 2000 cases from 2013 to 2017, as they attracted hopeless asylum procedures and should have brought it to a positive conclusion for the applicants. From a report of the internal audit of the BAMF of 11 May 2018, according to SPIEGEL information, however, it emerges that the Bremen branch of 1371 asylum cases examined from the years 2013 to 2017 would have been responsible for only 142 cases. These procedures were "fatal", the report says. In 54 percent of the Bremen decisions there was no admissible request. In about 40 percent of cases, the identity of the asylum seekers was not clarified. It had massively violated applicable law, safety regulations and in-house instructions and granted asylum without sufficient basis. [9] [10] [11] An examination by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution revealed that at least 115 intelligence-relevant persons were granted asylum status by the Bremen branch. These people currently have to be monitored as a threat by the police. [12]
The prosecution investigates (to date) against the former leader, Ulrike B., her deputy five other employees of the field office, three lawyers, an interpreter and a "mediator". [13] [14] [15] [16] In return for recognition money should have flowed. [17]
Ulrike B. had already received complaints in Nuremberg in 2014 because, among other things, she had surprisingly helped two rejected Iraqis gain recognition as refugees in Germany. In the summer of 2015 Ulrike B. contributed on a Sunday on the computer system another 25 Iraqis, who had actually applied for asylum in Austria, and thus reached that they could stay in Germany. After researching the Nürnberger Nachrichten and Frontal 21, the former BAMF director Frank-Jürgen Weise had already been informed about the abuses in Bremen in the summer of 2016. [19] Thus, the Lower Saxony region president Hauke Jagau sent in the summer of 2016 an e-mail manner: A deportation attempt had been canceled by the non-responsible field office in Bremen. Two weeks later Jagau got an email. "Mr. Manner" lets an employee confirm the receipt of Jagau's letter. The facts required "more in-depth investigations already initiated". Because of the "importance of the matter", however, an investigation could "take a while". [20] Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius also wrote a letter to the BAMF after he learned of irregularities in August / September 2016, but it remained unanswered. Pistorius spoke at the same time of communication problems both at the BAMF and in the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
In June 2017, the management level of the Federal Office received another fire mail from a senior official of the Bremen field office. In this he pointed to events with "extreme explosiveness". The e-mail went to the "Head of Operations, Controlling and Statistics" of the authority, Rudolf Knorr. The authority must urgently act, demanded the Bremen officials, evidence for the driving could have already been deleted. Although again and again with the BAMF leadership hints about the strange behavior of the head Ulrike B. received, the authority reimbursed only in November 2017 criminal complaint. [23] Josefa Schmid, since January 2018 head of the field office, sent in April a report to the Federal Interior Ministry, in which she wrote of at least 3332 inadmissible processed in Bremen asylum applications. Schmid gave the BAMF headquarters a co-responsibility for the alleged illegal machinations of their predecessor Ulrike B. and other persons. She expressed the suspicion that the head office could be involved in the case, since for years the management of the BAMF did not react to instructions of coworkers. On May 8, Schmid was transferred back to the field office Deggendorf. Since the staff council was not involved, the transfer was formally unlawful. However, on May 9, Schmid failed with the request to temporarily prohibit the transfer by the Administrative Court of Bremen, because it threatened no serious and unreasonable disadvantages. She lodged a complaint with the Higher Administrative Court of Bremen. [25] [26] BAMF insiders spoke of a criminal transfer for overly clear and critical words against the leadership of the BAMF.
On May 23, 2018, Federal Interior Minister Seehofer forbade the Bremen branch to make asylum decisions. The ban applies until the completion of the investigation and the ongoing reviews. [27]
At the end of May 2018, the Federal Police in the asylum affair initiated investigations within the framework of a joint investigation team, which also includes the Central Anti-Corruption Agency (ZAKS) and the State Criminal Police Office Bremen. [28]
As a result, the affair over unlawful residence decisions for refugees drew more circles. After the Bremen branch office of the BAMF now decisions of ten further field offices of the authority are to be examined. It is Bonn, Dortmund, the now vacant position in Bad Berleburg, Diez, Bingen, Schweinfurt, Rendsburg, Zirndorf, Neustadt (Hesse) and Eisenhüttenstadt. The so-called protection rate, which deviates from the national average, was above the average, the so-called reference protection ratio. [29] [30] [31]