Law Firm interpreter Allegedly Led Migrants in False Refugee Claims
A gay man facing death threats for going to the police after he was beaten in his conservative hometown. A woman harassed by loan sharks after her debt-ridden husband died. A couple whose neighbours threatened to burn down their house if they didn’t pay them back.
These were stories of persecution and terror from some of the people that Nurul Syahirah Binti Noor Azman helped in their refugee claims, the Crown told a jury at the Auckland District Court this morning.
“Except none of these stories are true,” said Crown prosecutor Jaspreet Bola as she opened the case against Azman.
The prosecutor said the gay man was not gay, the couple were posing as husband and wife, and no one threatened to burn down their house.
“These stories are pure fiction, a web of lies,” Bola said, “And the person responsible for spinning that web and getting paid for it is the defendant.”
The court heard that Azman, a 30-year-old Malaysian national, was on a working holiday in New Zealand where she worked as an interpreter at an Auckland-based law firm.
During the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, she lived in Tauranga and stayed at the same place as several migrants who worked as kiwifruit pickers.
The Crown alleges Azman encouraged the migrants to apply for refugee status, made up the stories, and took them to her law firm for lawyers to file their refugee claims.
The migrants did not speak or read English, and sought New Zealand visas or better jobs.
Bola said the migrants would copy the story that Azman had invented for them into their refugee claim forms, and send them off to Immigration.
Azman was paid $500 or $600 each time, the prosecutor claimed.
The alleged offending came to light when Immigration New Zealand started investigating the fraudulent claims that year.
The number of refugees New Zealand accepts every year is limited, Bola said, and the system relies on the honesty and integrity of claims.
Such offending undermines the integrity of the system and jeopardises the genuine claims of people facing risk of real harm, she said.
Azman faces five charges of giving false and misleading information to a refugee status officer.
Speaking through her lawyer Jolene Reddy, she said she did not knowingly supply any information to Immigration.
Reddy said Azman was simply working as an interpreter for people who wished to make these claims, and did not intend for any information to be provided to Immigration.
The Crown disagreed. “She invented these stories for money,” Bola had told the court earlier. “She was in the business of making up stories.”
The trial continues.
-NZ Herald