KEY POINTS:
Immigration officials accused of corruption have been cleared by an independent review, the Department of Labour said today.
Former immigration minister Tuariki Delamere had alleged that a batch of visas for business people were fast tracked by immigration officials in 2002.
This was despite a massive backlog of cases - potentially suggesting bribery.
Mr Delamere made the allegation last year, immediately after he was acquitted of several fraud charges relating to his work as an immigration consultant.
He said his uncovering of the cases has sparked an Immigration Service vendetta which led to his prosecution by the Serious Fraud Office.
But the Labour Department, of which the Immigration Service is part, today said an independent review of the cases in question, conducted by law firm Buddle Findlay, had found no evidence of corruption.
Acting labour secretary Graham Fortune said the department initiated the review after the allegation relating to 89 cases processed within a week at the service's business migration branch.
Mr Fortune said the review found:
* All the applications were handled according to normal standards
* the files were handled by several different officials and there was no evidence of undue influence
* officials behaved appropriately according to the standards of the time
The review found seven of the applications were declined, while 24 were replacement applications and another six were spouse applications.
As long as the applications were completed properly, the latter categories would normally only take one or two days to process, he said.
The same was true for an application relating to conditions on an investors' residence permit and a general work visa application made through the service's Paris office.
The review found the remaining 50 applications - 30 for long-term business visas and 20 for investors - were likely to have been allocated by team leaders to staff for processing due to the fact they looked in order with the correct paperwork attached.
"This was in order to meet targets and reduce backlog," according to a summary of the report's conclusions.
It also said some allocations were made on the basis of the immigration agent forwarding the application, where they had a track record of producing quality applications.
The review found that was also a reasonable measure to cut through the backlog of cases, which had built up to between 3000 and 4000 at the time.
- NZPA
