BERLIN, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Investigators are currently assessing whether criminal charges can be filed against Jutta Cordt, the director of the federal office for migration and asylum (Bamf) in Germany, media reported on Wednesday.
Anita Traut, spokesperson with the Nuremberg-Furth state prosecution office, confirmed to press that prosecutors were considering charging Cordt with aiding and abetting illegal residence in connection to a spiraling asylum scandal at her agency. Traut emphasized, however, that no decision had been reached yet in the matter.
Meanwhile, the ranks of opposition politicians demanding Cordt's sacking have swelled further.
"If accusations that Ms. Cordt was aware of the illicit proceedings earlier than she has claimed so far are proven true, then (interior) minister (Horst) Seehofer must fire her," the Free Democratic Party's (FDP) interior spokesperson Linda Teuteberg told the "Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland" (RND). Teuteberg's statement hereby echoed an earlier demand by Luise Amtsberg, refugee policy spokesperson for the Green party.
A senior Bamf employee in Bremen stands accused of incorrectly granting humanitarian residency in Germany to at least 1,200 asylum seekers' applications between 2013 and 2017. The Bremen State Prosecution Office confirmed that it was investigating the Bamf employee in question, as well as three attorneys and one translator who are believed to have cooperated systematically in subverting the course of justice.
The suspects face criminal charges of corruption and organized incitement of filing fraudulent asylum applications. A spokesperson for the interior ministry subsequently emphasized that the accusations only concerned an "isolated case."
Interior Minister and Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Horst Seehofer told press on Monday that he would decide shortly whether or not a larger "organizational or personnel reshuffle" was needed at Bamf in order to conduct a comprehensive assessment of suspicious asylum decisions and restore the reputation of the agency.
However, Seehofer has also come under heavy attack himself in the affair for allegedly withholding information from the public.
Josefa Schmid, a civil servant who was posted to the Bamf Bremen office as an interim director following the first reports of the scandal, says that she personally informed the minister in March about 3,332 asylum decisions which she believed to be incorrect.
Schmid complained in the newspaper "Zeit" on Wednesday that her subsequent transfer to a different station in Bavaria was "arbitrary" and intended as a "punishment" for her vocal criticism of the Bamf headquarters.
Commenting the scandal on Wednesday, the former Bamf director Frank-Juergen Weise attributed the irregularities discovered at the government agency in recent months to a chaotic organizational structure. "There were no structures which could have withstood this pressure (from the refugee crisis, note)" Weise told RND.
Weise further lamented that there were "hardly any control mechanisms' at Bamf, noting that he was the first to introduce an internal audit process at the government agency in 2015. The ex-director retired at the end of 2016 and was succeeded by the current director Cordt.
The Association of German cities (Deutscher Staedtetag) called for a swift investigation of the scandal on Wednesday to restore trust on behalf of municipal authorities in the asylum application process.
The Association's President Helmut Dedy warned in the newspaper "Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung" that the integration in cities could only succeed if citizens did not "harbor distrust against successful asylums seekers."
According to a report by the newspaper "WELT", the percentage of successful asylum applications continued on a downward trend between January and April. "WELT" cited official figures that only every third (32.5 percent) refugee was granted humanitarian stay by authorities in Germany during the period.