Immigration fiasco deepens as senior official 'took bribes to allow Nigerians into Britain'

Entry clearance officer arrested at head office

The passport control fiasco deepened today as it emerged that a senior employee allegedly accepted bribes to allow Nigerians to enter Britain illegally.

Samuel Shoyeju, an entry clearance officer, was arrested while working at the immigration service's head offices in Croydon, south London.



He is due to appear at Basildon Crown Court in Essex this week.

Border control? The immigration fiasco deepened today as it emerged that a senior employee allegedly accepted bribes to allow Nigerians to enter Britain illegally

It is thought he will be accused of breaches of the immigration law for allegedly falsely issuing entry visas and misconduct in a public office.



He is also accused of possessing false Nigerian passports and concealing substantial cash payments to a bank account in this name either knowing or suspecting that they were the proceeds of criminal conduct, reported The Sunday Times.



The arrest comes just days after Brodie Clark, director of the UK Border and Immigration Agency, was suspended over a major fiasco that may have left Britain open to terrorists and criminals.

If the claims are true he is facing the sack without a penny in compensation.

The 60-year-old former prison governor was ordered out of the Home Office after claims that over the summer immigration officers were told secretly not to bother checking biometric chips on the passports of hundreds of thousands of citizens from outside the EU.



Staff were also instructed not to check their fingerprints or other personal details against a Warnings Index containing the names of terror suspects and illegal immigrants who are denied entry into Britain because they could put the public at risk.

It is believed that Mr Clark was reported to the authorities by junior passport control staff who complained after being told to implement the 'discretionary' checking policy, according to the Sunday Times.

Facing the sack: Brodie Clark, pictured with a haul of cocaine, was suspended over a major fiasco that may have left Britain open to terrorists and criminals

In July, Home Secretary Theresa May and fellow Home Office Ministers agreed to a pilot scheme allowing border officials to operate a 'risk-based approach' to a limited number of EU passenger checks.



It meant that EU nationals could have their biometric passports checked 'upon the discretion of a UK Border Agency official' instead of automatically'.



In addition, European schoolchildren travelling with their families or in groups would not automatically be checked against the Warnings Index, which is used to alert the agency about people who may be of interest.



But it appears that Mr Clark may have extended the relaxation of the checks way beyond the policy laid down by ministers.



Mrs May is said to have reacted with ‘incredulity and fury’ when informed of the unauthorised blunder and has ordered an independent inquiry to be conducted by the Chief Inspector of Immigration, John Vine.



A senior source said it was clear Ministers had ‘no idea’ until last week that the passport controls had been axed to such an extent.



‘It’s a bit of a mess, but it does look as if any pleas that will be made on Mr Clark’s behalf will be in mitigation and that he will lose his job,’ the source added.



Initially, the Border Agency offered Mr Clark the chance to retire. But Home Office officials intervened and refused to allow him to go in order to prevent him from winning a discretionary payout.



The same is thought to apply to two other senior Border Agency officials suspended at the same time – Graeme Kyle, director of operations at Heathrow, and Carole Upshall, director of the Border Force South and European Operation.



Mr Clark was suspended pending the results of two investigations.

Dave Wood, head of the enforcement and crime group at the UKBA, is carrying out a two-week inquiry aimed at discovering to what extent checks were scaled down and what the security implications might have been.

