Immigrants' fake qualifications foiled

More than 120 immigrants have been caught using fake qualifications to pretty up their backgrounds in the past 18 months.

Figures obtained under the Official Information Act from New Zealand Qualifications Authority show 42 applications were found to be forged, false or altered in the six months to January.

From July 2000 to June 2001, 80 applications were turned down for being false.

The authority has a specialist unit of 70 people dedicated to cross-checking qualifications.

Most problem documents come from India, Bangladesh, China and South Africa.

The authenticity of immigrant qualifications has been thrown into the spotlight after the sacking of Maori Television Service boss Canadian John Davy.

Police have been called into investigate Mr Davy for alleged fraud after he falsified his credentials which included a MBA degree from the Ashland School of Business at Denver State University - it doesn't exist except as a name used on counterfeit credentials sold over the internet.

In the six months to January NZQA checked and verified the backgrounds of more than 4000 people. Figures show the authority had another 2600 applications waiting verification of one or more qualifications in the middle of February. The authority doesn't keep records of the average time it takes to check an application, but it will try for 10 months and make up to three requests from education institutions to verify them.

NZQA qualifications evaluation manager Mary Neazor said yesterday the level of forgery was getting very sophisticated thanks to improving technology and internet use. She couldn't comment on specific cases of forgery because it would identify the practices.

NZQA communications manager Bill Lennox said it had a three-step system for checking qualifications which included making sure the institution existed, checking the qualification existed within that institution and then whether the qualification had actually been awarded to the person concerned.

"For example sometimes someone might have a qualification from a university that exists, but the qualification hasn't been offered for 20 years and they say they got it just a year ago."

Ms Neazor said staff regularly attended seminars overseas on the most up to date forgery techniques and the authority was hooked into a number of international networks. She believed its checks operated well and identified false credentials. The authority would notify police and other agencies if a problem was found.

"For us the quality of checks is the most important thing to ensure New Zealand's interests are protected."

- NZPA