But, it's not a small investigation. As we told you last night, 7News has received information that there are possibly dozens of fake or questionable nationality certificates out there. Just like the one Chinese national Yuanran Zheng was caught with and charged for. Reports suggest that senior employees at the Immigration department and the Social Security Board are involved. Well today we caught up with Immigration Minister Godwin Hulse and he told us that the immigration department is not behind this.
Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration and Nationality
"My understanding is that no, the immigration department has nothing to do with that. There will always be these operatives out there who try to forge and fake documents, it is good the system in place now is beginning to catch them, this is not the first time they have been caught we have caught people before but I don't see that as something that is ever going to end. Where there is money and a demand people will try all sorts of things and I'm happy to know that so far it has been reported to me that no one in immigration has been involved because there is no authentic document that has been re-done, it is clearly some fake documents since its inception."
Courtney Weatherburne, reporter
"In relation to those same documents the record, or those documents date back to 30 years, are you guys able to access that information or access those documents to verify and to see what happened there?"
Hon. Godwin Hulse
"Well yes and no in some cases as you probably heard in the hearings yesterday, archives are always a difficult thing and we are now moving into the E-mode of everything so hopefully being able to capture documents electrically will be able to aid in the storage and retrieval. Hard copies are always an issue."
Our sources say that Nationality Certificates from the Economic Citizenship Program of the 1980's are surfacing - and - as Hulse alluded to - it is difficult to verify them.
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