Refugee agency workers could manipulate files – Report

A security loophole in the electronic filing system at the German Government body, responsible for processing asylum applications, could have been used by thousands of employees to manipulate files, a newspaper has reported.

The claim comes from an internal audit carried out by the scandal-hit Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) for its 2018 audit, as seen by the daily Tagesspiegel, which reported on it on Friday.

The auditors found that almost half of the people working at BAMF could have accessed the files in the Maris system and could have made wide-ranging alterations to the files.

“In actuality, it would be possible to abuse this right,’’ the audit report stated.

“It would also be possible to remove a planned hearing of an asylum application and replace it with a questionnaire.’’

The right to access the files should only have been permitted to a small number of employees, but in fact, access was given to 3,800 of them, Tagesspiegel reported.

In some BAMF branches, up to 85 per cent of the users of the Maris system had been authorised to alter the records, the publication cited the audit report as saying.

The report said that the former director of the Bremen office of the BAMF, identified under strict German privacy laws as Ulrike B, used her access rights to manipulate records.

Ulrike B is under investigation on charges of corruption and encouragement of improper asylum applications.

Her lawyer, Erich Joester, said on Thursday that there was no evidence against her and that her legal team would mount a “fierce defence” in court.