Immigration official jailed for corruption (From Croydon Guardian)

Croydon-based immigration official jailed for corruption

2:34pm Monday 3rd October 2011 in Local news By Court Reporter

The UK Border Agency offices at Lunar House

A 'model' immigration officer who took nearly £50,000 from asylum seekers to give them indefinite stays in the UK has been jailed for five years.

Corrupt Benjamin Orororo lied to superiors about 19 asylum seekers who were due to fail their applications to ensure they were accepted.

The 37-year-old had enjoyed a highly successful career with the civil service, working his way through schools and the Ministry of Justice before gaining a position in immigration control at the UK Border Agency headquarters in Croydon, South London.

At Croydon Crown Court today, Judge Stow heard how the father of two was held in such high regard by his employers he had been featured in the company magazine as an example of hard work, honesty and integrity.

But while he was being lauded by his bosses the corrupt officer was taking thousands of pounds from asylum seekers he knew would fail in their applications to ensure they were granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

When his bosses said they would approve applications made under such circumstances, Orororo put notes on real cases he was working on saying upper management had given them the green light.

Judge Stow, sentencing, said: “You deliberately set out to grant corruptly indefinite leave to remain to people that were not entitled to it – and what it worse, you did it for money.

“The money was obtained by you as a result of your corrupt grant of indefinite leave to remain to quite a large number of people.

“This sort of behaviour not only undermines the system of immigration control, a system which sadly nowadays is far too often subject to abuse, but it also completely undermines public confidence in the system of immigration control.”

The court heard Orororo’s wife, who also works for the UK Border Agency as well as the Royal Mail, has suffered from depression since charges were brought against her husband.

He was jailed for five years for each of his 19 counts of wilful misconduct in a public office, to be served concurrently.