BERLIN, May 30 (Xinhua) -- An employee of the Federal Office for Asylum and Migration (Bamf) who has been accused of illicitly granting asylum to thousands of refugees in Germany defended her actions publicly on Wednesday.
Ulrike B. told the newspaper "BILD" that she had always prioritized people in need over numbers in her work. She said that she stood by all of her decisions, and rejected accusations of corruption in the case as being "ridiculous" because she never accepted any money from asylum seekers.
The civil servant headed the Bremen branch of Bamf until July 2016. She was suspended in a disciplinary procedure in connection to perceived irregularities at her regional office which reportedly had an average approval rate of 96 percent for asylum applications, compared to 62 percent across other German states.
Many of the individuals which were granted asylum in Bremen were members of the Yazidi religious minority. Yazidis have been subject to violent persecution by the so-called "Islamic State" in their homelands of northern Iraq and northern Syria.
Nevertheless, Ulrike B. stands accused of incorrectly granting humanitarian residency in Germany to at least 1,200 application asylum seekers between 2013 and 2017. The Bremen State Prosecution Office has confirmed that the Bamf employee, three attorneys and a translator, are being investigated on suspicion of corruption and organized incitement of filing fraudulent asylum applications.
Commenting the scandal earlier, former Bamf director Frank-Juergen Weise attributed the irregularities discovered at the Bremen branch to a chaotic organizational structure at the government agency.
Weise further lamented that there were "hardly any control mechanisms" at Bamf, noting that he was the first to introduce an internal audit process in 2015.
However, Ulrike B. told the "BILD" that following the appointment of Weise as Bamf director, the organizational culture changed.
Facing enormous logistical pressure as a result of the ongoing refugee crisis, employees were urged to prioritize quantitative targets in the assessment of asylum applications over the fates of individuals.
According to Ulrike B, Weise hereby followed government orders to increase efficiency at Bamf whilst being aware that staff would not be able to give the large number of cases the due consideration they required.