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INTRODUCTION

I was asked by the Deputy Secretary - Legal of the Department of Labour to manage an investigation into a specific aspect of a wide-ranging complaint by the Honourable Tuariki Delamere against the New Zealand Immigration Service ("NZIS").

In his letter of 4 December 2005 (the letter of complaint), Mr Delamere states, amongst other things:

"5. I also believe an investigation and/or enquiry should be held into what seems to be the cover up by the former General Manager of the NZIS of possible corrupt practices in the Business Migration Branch during 2001 and 2002."

Attached to the letter of complaint is a document prepared by Mr Delamere dated 27 November 2005 and entitled "A Report Documenting the Unlawful Activities of the New Zealand Immigration Service". At pages 8 and 9 of this document ("The possible cover-up of possible bribery at BMB"), Mr Delamere alleges that:

• in 2002, 91 "business" applications were assessed and approved in less than one week (from the date the application arrived at the NZIS to when the decision was made), and at least one application had been assessed and approved on the same day;
• the NZIS had stated that the applications had been dealt with in that timeframe because they were "just so outstanding" and therefore needed to be approved immediately. (In a previous letter of complaint, dated 8 February 2003, Mr Delamere said that NZIS employees had stated that the reason for some applications being processed within one week (when other applications were not allegedly allocated to a business immigration specialist for eight months) was that some applications "just stand out for their quality and ease of processing and verification". Presumably, this is where Mr Delamere's reference to "just so outstanding" came from);
• in 2002, there was a backlog of 3000 cases, and applicants had been told it would take eight months before their application could be assigned to a case officer for initial assessment;
• it was impossible for a business immigration specialist to assess and verify the accuracy and validity of a "business investor" application in one week, much less in one day;
• in 2001 and 2002, it was well known in the immigration industry that some applicants from China and South Korea would pay more than $50,000 for an immediate approval of their "residency" application (no further details of this allegation were provided by Mr Delamere);
• the only way these 91 applications could have been processed in the timeframe that they were was if somebody had specifically intervened and given them priority. Without such intervention, the 91 applications could not have been identified as "outstanding" from the 3000 applications waiting to be assessed.

I was asked to investigate the handling of the 91 applications to which Mr Delamere had referred. My instructions were to assess whether the applications were handled according to normal standards, whether there was any evidence that officials were influenced by external forces, and whether officials involved with processing the cases had behaved appropriately.

In essence, Mr Delamere highlighted various contextual issues ie the backlog and processing times; stated his opinion that the accuracy and validity of an application could not be assessed in a week; observed that it was well known that applicants were paying large sums of money for quick processing and then concluded that there must have been intervention by staff within the Business Migration Branch, that being the only way a new application could be processed so quickly. Specifically, as I understand him, Mr Delamere has suggested that some staff may have been paid ("bribery"), to either process these applications, or to ensure that they were put in the system for processing.

It is my role to see whether there is evidence to support the contention that there may have been "bribery".

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