International college of Auckland
Hamilton (New Zealand), 11 April, 2019:
By Gurbir Singh:
For the first time, a private training establishment in New Zealand has been charged with and convicted of immigration fraud.
The International College of Auckland was convicted by the Auckland District Court for 52 charges of breaching the Immigration Act for suppling false or misleading information to an Immigration Officer and fined $40,000. The College pleaded guilty at their first appearance.
The charges relate to a scheme by the College between 2015 – 2017, where the College provided official receipts stating that students had paid the full amount of the course fees, but the students had only paid part. Under immigration instructions a full payment is required for the course in order to be granted a student visa for the duration of their course.
The receipts were provided by the College to the students to submit to Immigration New Zealand (INZ), along with the Offer of Place to support their student visa application.
In October, 2017, the New Zealand Education Authority had withdrawn the accreditation of business courses of the International College of Auckland (ICA) for “poor quality of teaching.”
Read our earlier related news-story of this College here: http://www.babushahi.com/full-news.php?id=64229
The Auckland District Court Judge Collins said he considered the offending by the College to be gross negligence. There was a serious failure in honesty and he considered the false receipts to be forgeries.
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Gurbir Singh is a Freelance Feature Writer & Journalist based in New Zealand