For the past few 2 days, we've been showing you portions of this Wednesday Senate Hearings on Immigration, and we've mostly been featuring former CEO Candelaria Saldivar Morter, who was in charge of the Immigration Department.
Well tonight, still, we have a little more from the CEO in which she disclosed details of an extensive inventory check of the nationality files at the Department. It occurred from October 8 to the 18th of 2013, around the time when Arthur Saldivar had revealed that he had come in possession of a throve of nationality files which were labelled with the word "to be destroyed" or "destroyed". This was during that period at the Immigration Department when the Won Hong Kim scandal was raging, and the suspicion at the time that there was an attempt by unknown personalities in the Department to cover their tracks.
Well, that inventory check revealed that there were missing nationality files for 164 persons. Here's the Senate discussing that with the former CEO, since it forms a part of the Auditor General's report:
Candelaria Saldivar-Morter - Former CEO In Charge of Immigration
"Initially the ministry had its staff do an inventory of the nationality files during my time and it was done not only to do an inventory of what files existed, but also to see the completeness of the files and there were a lot of incomplete files and it was based on that that we had to put certain polices in place in terms of getting the files completed. We went through an exercise where we try to reach people to ask them to please bring in these documents because they were not on file. Not to say they weren't submitted, but it was not on the files. So there were incomplete files, but the department had to go through a stage where we had to try to complete some of the files that already existed."
Hon. Mark Lizarraga - Business Senator
"Was this exercise done at the time that Arthur Saldivar was said to be in possession of the files? Is this what triggered that..?"
Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"No, that did not factor into it at all. What factored into it was the fact that whenever the minister would request a file, we had issues with finding some of the files and so we decided on our own, to do an inventory of the files so that we do not have that issue - so that we know whether we had the files or not and inventory also entailed checking the files to see the completeness of the files."
Hon. Mark Lizarraga
"You had somebody in charge of the files obviously, in the department right?"
Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"In the department there is a records clerk."
Hon. Mark Lizarraga
"And that is the person responsible for the safe keep of the files and did you find out why there were files missing? Do you have a copy of that report that we can...?"
Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"The report is in te nationality file."
Hon. Mark Lizarraga
"I'm talking about the report that you did internally."
Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"It's in the report."
Hon. Mark Lizarraga
"And what did you do when you found that there were files missing?"
Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"We couldn't really do anything of we couldn't find the files. At that point we had to find out what all files were missing, but we know the numbers and we may have known some of the names, but there was nothing we could do. We searched for the files and we just couldn't find them."
Hon. Mark Lizarraga
"Did you find that to be unusual?"
Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"Well a lot of things were unusual at the immigration department and that was why we were trying to put things in place to ensure. But we had to start at some point and the only way we could know where we were is to find what situation is was and that was why the inventory was done."
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