Monday, August 6

Russian Translator at United Nations - Visa Fraud

Here is just one more example of the cesspool that is the United Nations:
An employee at the United Nations headquarters in New York has been arrested on suspicion of visa fraud. Russian national Vyacheslav Manokhin, 45, is accused of using his position to provide false documents to support US visa applications since April 2005.

US prosecutors said he made it appear the UN supported the applications and, consequently, most visas were granted. - BBC
So, how did he make it appear that the UN supported the applications? He used UN stationary.
It is alleged that he submitted documents on UN letterheaded paper for non-US citizens to attend UN conferences that either did not exist or which they did not attend. - BBC
This last paragraph opens up many questions about how the US processed these applications. Clearly there was a poor verification process for verifying visa applications for UN Events. I find that hard to believe. Maybe this is how he was caught. Although this was going on for two years. According to this story, the verification that was done, involved calling only number provided in the application:
Prosecutors said Manokhin admitted to a U.N. investigator that he had allowed an alien to use his U.N. telephone number as a contact number on immigration documents and that he would say that visa applicants were legitimate U.N. conference attendees if anyone asked. - Newsday
The sad thing is that most likely there will be no changes made to how these types of visas are processed on either the US or UN sides.

Click on the UN label for many more cases of UN abuse.

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