Last night, we brought you coverage of the testimonies from the retired police officer, Superintendent Julio Valdez, and Police Commissioner Allen Whylie. They were yesterday's witnesses in the Senate Hearings on Immigration.
We showed you how the Senate Select Committee cross-examined Commissioner Whylie as the top cop for almost 2 hours. But, there was brief portion of the hearing where they questioned him about his time as the CEO responsible for Immigration. Before he took up the post of Police Commissioner, Whylie was the Immigration CEO from 2009 to early 2012. They Senate wanted to find out if he had any reason to believe that there was corrupt behavior at the Department when he was in charge.
As we've reported, the Auditor General discovered an internal memo within the Ministry from as early as September 2005, and it indicates that there was suspicion of hustling being done by immigration officers. Former Immigration Director Jose Zetina wrote to his then Minister, and he said, quote, "In the Nationality and Residence Section corruption stems from facilitating and speeding up the process of applications once payment is made to certain individual civilians who run this sections…in some cases delay tactics are used to pressure individual applicants to pay for the services..."
So, this information was within the Ministry about 4 years before Whylie was appointed the CEO. What did he know about the Department that has become so infamous? Here are the questions he answered about his time there:
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