Home Office worker ‘was lynchpin of plot to let illegal migrants stay’:

From the Daily Mail. A prime example of the law of unintended consequences. Or maybe it was intentional – I have my suspicions. But my generation of “Old School” incorruptible, honest and loyal Civil Servants were cleared out of several government departments in 2007-8, to increase diversity and save money. These ‘gentlemen’ kept their positions, and probably were promoted in our place.

A gang including a Home Office worker masterminded a conspiracy to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country, a court has heard. Shamsu Iqbal was allegedly the lynchpin of the group that used his ‘trusted’ Home Office position to falsify documents – with investigators identifying 437 potential cases over five years.

The 61-year-old changed the records of migrants who had permission to stay in the UK, giving their identities to people who were in Britain illegally, jurors heard.Iqbal’s co-accused – lawyers Sheikh Muhammad Usman, 45, Mohammad Khawar Aftab Hussain, 49, and Mohammad Ibrahim Ali, 47 – would then allegedly contact the Home Office to ‘straighten out’ the status of ‘impostors’ who had taken on another identity.

 Left to right Shamsu Iqbal,  Mohammed Hussain, Sheikh Muhammad Usman,  Mohammad Ibrahim Ali arriving at Crown Court Croydon

The court heard Iqbal had a secure log-on to a Home Office system known as the Case Information Database, which holds details of applications to remain in the UK.

Investigators found he had been ‘looking at data he should not have been looking at’ while allegedly changing details and issuing documents that could allow people in Britain illegally to remain.

Jurors were told one man, Azad Passa, came to Britain as a child in 1989 before being granted citizenship in 2005. It is alleged his Home Office record was manipulated to submit a fake request for a Biometric Residence Permit identity card – so that it could then be issued to another man, Gufranur Rahaman, who was in the UK on a time-limited student visa.

The court was told that, in the fake application, the address given to the Home Office for Mr Passa was linked to Usman, who represented Mr Rahaman.

The court heard that by February 2016, Home Office investigators had identified 437 potential cases, but these were narrowed down to more than 20 for the ten-week trial, which opened on Thursday, because there was not time to investigate them all.

Iqbal, an administrator working for the asylum workload and administration team, was suspended in May 2015 and sacked in October. Iqbal, Usman, Hussain and Ali had each other’s numbers saved on their mobile phones and data shows they corresponded with one another.

Miss Felix said money went in and out of an account of a south London restaurant in which Iqbal had a business interest, even though the restaurant was shut at the time.

Iqbal, from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, Usman, from Wandsworth, south London, Hussain from Colliers Wood, south-west London, and Ali, from Ilford, Essex, all deny charges of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. 

Ali also faces a count of unlawful possession of two British and 11 Bangladeshi passports relating to someone else, which he also denies. The trial continues.