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German Minister Tasks Supreme Audit Institution to Check Migration Agency

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced on Thursday that he tasked the Supreme Audit Institution to examine the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF) and German Interior Ministry amid the bribes scandal.
Sputnik

"I have tasked the Supreme Audit Institution to check [the migration agency]. The SAI is undoubtedly an independent institution and has accepted the task… The examination will also concern the Interior Ministry," Seehofer told the parliament as aired by the Die Welt broadcaster.

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In April, a scandal erupted in Germany after it was revealed that a former official of BAMF's Bremen regional office and his four other colleagues took bribes in exchange for granting around 1,200 refugees with asylum although they did not fulfill the criteria.

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It is also believed that the office could have granted asylum for hundreds of Iraqi Yazidi refugees between 2013 and 2017 despite their ineligibility to get an asylum in Germany.

Germany has become a major destination for thousands of migrants and refugees from the Middle East amid instability caused by the civil war in Syria and the activity of the Daesh* terrorist group in the region. According to BAMF, between 2014 and 2016 the country received over one million asylum applications, more than any other country in the European Union. As a result of the influx, the German authorities have tightened the migration control.

*Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist group banned in Russia

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