Cologne (dpa / lnw) - A few days after the arrest of an employee of the Cologne immigration office, who is said to have issued incorrect documents and sold them to an alleged smuggling ring, according to the state government, no other officials are suspected of crimes. "There are currently no other officials suspected of being involved in the crime," said Integration Minister Josefine Paul (Greens) on Wednesday in the state parliament's integration committee, referring to the Cologne public prosecutor's office. The woman is suspected of having committed crimes since January 2022.
However, the minister also made it clear that the investigations into the case are still ongoing and that consistent clarification is required. "The service requirements and practical work processes in the immigration office of the city of Cologne have not yet been finally clarified in the course of the investigations, which have been conducted undercover so far, and are the subject of further investigations," explained Paul in a current quarter hour of the committee, which was initiated by the AfD.
The federal police announced on Thursday last week that a woman and two men had been arrested on the basis of arrest warrants in a preliminary investigation into suspected gang and commercial smuggling of foreigners. Among them is an employee of the Cologne immigration office. The federal police are investigating a total of eleven suspects. They are said to have provided people, mainly from Syria, with illegally issued identity documents in order to enable them to enter Germany without permission. So far, 26 cases have been identified in which several thousand euros are said to have been paid for each smuggling, the federal police said at the time.
