Officials at immigration and welfare offices attempting to identify asylum-seekers face serious difficulty ensuring people are not taking advantage of German social services, according to reports in Die Welt and the Nürnberger Nachrichten newspapers on Thursday.

A lack of fingerprint scanners at 200 of Germany's 494 immigration offices and all social service offices mean officials cannot use fingerprints to confirm people are not using multiple identities to apply for social benefits, the papers said, citing information from the Interior Ministry.

The immigration offices would receive the devices by September while job centers and other social service offices would be equipped with fingerprint scanners by the end of 2018, the Interior Ministry said.

Read more: German refugee agency scandal – Keep calm and investigate

Establishing who's who

Some 40 percent of asylum-seekers in Germany did not have identity documents in 2016, in 2017 the number dropped to 35 percent, according to the newspaper reports. During the process of determining whether a person is granted asylum in Germany, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is required to establish the applicant's identity.

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Since 2016, vetting of asylum-seekers has included comparing fingerprint scans with prints in a central database of asylum recipients and applicants. BAMF did not take fingerprints of the hundreds of thousands of people who arrived at the height of the migrant flows to Germany in 2015. In June 2017, the agency's head, Jutta Cordt, said some 5,000 people received asylum without having established their identity.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and premiers from Germany's 16 states agreed in February 2017 to improve cooperation at the federal, state and local levels in an effort to limit abuse of social services that could result from multiple aid applications.

BAMF breakdowns

BAMF's work identifying asylum-seekers has come under heavy criticism. Anis Amri, who killed 12 people by driving a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in 2016, was known to authorities under 14 different identities.

Read more: Germany launches new investigation into Berlin Christmas market attack failures

In 2017, Franco A., a Bundeswehr officer, received protected status after applying for asylum. Prosecutors believed he planned to use his status to commit an act of terror that would be blamed on asylum-seekers. He was later released due to lack of evidence of an immediate threat to the state.

The migrant authority made headlines again after accusations this month that its office in Bremen approved hundreds of applications without sufficiently evaluating them.

German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Müller said in January 2017 that benefit fraud due to asylum-seekers' multiple registrations cost the country millions of euros.

German asylum scandal: A timeline Corruption scandal at BAMF On April 20, 2018, a number of employees at the regional BAMF office in Bremen were accused of having illegally accepted hundreds of asylum applicants between 2013 and 2017, mainly from Iraq's Yazidi community. Bremen public prosecutors announced that six people, including the former director of the Bremen BAMF office, were under investigation for alleged corruption in about 1,200 cases.

German asylum scandal: A timeline Damage control Steffen Seibert, spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, reacted swiftly to the allegations, saying it would be wrong to speculate on what consequences the incident could have for the BAMF immigration offices. He said that the "extremely serious allegations" would first have to be resolved. The BAMF scandal could be a major embarrassment to Chancellor Merkel's open-door policy to refugees.

German asylum scandal: A timeline The plot thickens A few weeks into the scandal, German media reported that 13 further regional BAMF branches were going to be subject to checks regarding their approval of asylum applications. The branches had apparently come under scrutiny for showing noticeable differences in the number of asylum applications accepted or rejected in comparison to other offices. Some 8,000 applications will have to be re-checked.

German asylum scandal: A timeline BAMF head under fire A month into the scandal, details emerged that BAMF had been informed about the possible improprieties in Bremen earlier than thought, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported. The irregularities were reportedly flagged back in February 2017. In the light of the growing scandal, BAMF head Jutta Cordt announced that some 18,000 asylum decisions made in Bremen since 2000 now had to be re-checked.

German asylum scandal: A timeline Seehofer to face parliamentary committee German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer meanwhile confirmed that he would testify before a special meeting of the Bundestag internal affairs committee to be convened at the request of the Green Party. The committee hopes to avoid a full-blown parliamentary investigation, which two other opposition parties — the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the center-right FDP — are calling for.

German asylum scandal: A timeline Man of the hour This might be the man who would have to answer some serious questions if a comprehensive parliamentary inquiry should be launched. Thomas de Maiziere was Germany's interior minister until the beginning of the year, overseeing the management of asylum application at the height of the refugee crisis. De Maiziere, an ally of Merkel's, criticized the shortcomings of the assessment system in the past.

German asylum scandal: A timeline Stripped of authority On May 23, the German Interior Ministry prohibited the regional BAMF office in Bremen from deciding whether individual refugees will be given asylum in the country. Seehofer said an internal BAMF report had shown that "legal regulations and internal policies" had been "disregarded" at the center.

German asylum scandal: A timeline Federal Police join probe The city of Bremen has said Germany's Federal Criminal Police are now part of the inquiry into the wide-ranging corruption. The decision came after a crisis meeting on the scandal surrounding the city's asylum procedure for refugees. Author: Sertan Sanderson



sms/kms (dpa, KNA)

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