Chinese man tells of paying €500 in visa fraud

A Chinese immigrant has told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that he paid €500 to a former Garda National Immigration Bureau employee…

A Chinese immigrant has told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that he paid €500 to a former Garda National Immigration Bureau employee "to thank him" for issuing a fraudulent visa to his girlfriend.

John Kennedy (69), Trees Avenue, Mount Merrion, Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to six counts of receiving bribes of €500 as well as a bottle of wine and a meal voucher between December 2002 and January 2003 in return for issuing fraudulent visas.

Li Yung Feng said he met Mr Kennedy in Bewley's restaurant, Grafton Street, and gave him the money. "I wanted to thank him but I didn't know what to buy him." Speaking through an interpreter, Mr Li said Mr Kennedy would not accept the money at first but when he forced it into his pocket, he didn't return it.

Mr Li said he went with his girlfriend to the Garda National Immigration Bureau to get her visa renewed but was told by an official that she had not attended enough classes at the English language college she was registered with to qualify for an extension.

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He said they approached Mr Kennedy who was a clerical officer there and asked him if he could help.

He told them to go to another language school which would give them a letter saying she had attended enough classes.

Mr Li said he did this and they returned to the office where they received a visa from Mr Kennedy.

Mr Li said that following this, he helped "seven or eight" Chinese students receive visas from Mr Kennedy from December 2002 to January 2003.

He said the students would pay €1,600 to the language school named by Mr Kennedy for an attendance letter and he would get another €400 "because his friends wanted to thank him".

Garda Supt Pat Clavin, who had worked in the bureau, told John Rogers SC, defending, that there were problems with certain English language colleges which were issuing false letters.

Some of them were "little more than a room with a computer and printer in it".

"There was a number of colleges we became aware of and we wouldn't have accepted letters from these places," he said.

The trial continues.