Minister reassures applicants for residence

In responding to claims made in Parliament this afternoon, Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel has assured business (investor) applicants that at no stage was the security of any files compromised.

A decision was made by New Zealand Immigration Service to utilise spare capacity at its Beijing and Shanghai offices to assist processing the backlog of business residence applications from China.

The files were uplifted from the NZIS’ Business Migration Branch on 18 June.

“I am advised that due to the confidential nature of the documents, they were forwarded as “diplomatic bag” in order to ensure that they were handled in a secure manner.

“They were picked up by a transport company, shrink wrapped onto three pallets and transferred on 24 June to the company’s Auckland branch.

“On 30 June at the request of the transport company, the documents were uplifted by another company, which provides contracted secure document storage services to NZIS.

“It is not clear why the transport company did not forward these applications immediately to Beijing and Shanghai. As the documents were originally packed in the storage service company’s boxes, there may have been a misunderstanding about the intended destination.

“My advice is that the boxes were clearly marked for delivery to NZIS in Beijing and Shanghai, and NZIS will be following that up on this matter, given that they held “diplomatic bag” status.

“The important thing is that business (investor) applicants can be assured that at no stage was the security of their information, compromised.”

The files have now arrived in Beijing and Shanghai and the processing of those files will commence immediately.

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