Germany’s asylum authority says it will re-examine some 18,000 cases handled by one of its regional offices amid a scandal over the improper granting of asylum requests.
Jutta Cordt, the head of Germany’s Federal Office for Migration, said Friday that the office will review all cases since 2000 in which people were granted asylum by its branch in Bremen, the country’s smallest state.
In April, prosecutors said at least 1,200 asylum requests, mostly by members of Syria’s Yazidi minority, may have been wrongly approved between 2013 and 2016. The former head of the Bremen branch office is being investigated on suspicion of corruption.
Cordt says her authority so far has reviewed some 4,400 decisions by various branches and found that cases handled by Bremen were by far the most problematic.