Belgian Official Suspected Of Selling At Least 200 Humanitarian Visas To Refugees - Gov't

Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published January 18, 2019 | 05:09 PM

Melikan Kucam, a city councilor in Belgian Mechelen, is suspected of illegally selling at least 200 humanitarian visas to refugees from Iraq and Syria and has been charged with human trafficking, corruption and extortion, Maggie De Block, the Belgian minister in charge of migration policy, said

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2019) Melikan Kucam, a city councilor in Belgian Mechelen, is suspected of illegally selling at least 200 humanitarian visas to refugees from Iraq and Syria and has been charged with human trafficking, corruption and extortion, Maggie De Block, the Belgian minister in charge of migration policy, said.

According to media reports, Kucam, who was arrested earlier this week, charged up to 10,000 Euros ($11,400) for each humanitarian visa he processed and issued via intermediaries to Christian asylum-seekers from conflict zones in Syria and Iraq. Officially, the administrative costs associated with obtaining a humanitarian visa, which, unlike a usual visa, allows the applicant to seek asylum in Belgium, are estimated at 350 euros ($400).

"Melikan appears in about 200 dossiers. This is preliminary data," De Block said in the Belgian parliament on Wednesday.

The minister added that, for humanitarian reasons, she did not intend to deny refugees who entered Belgium with Kucam's help the possibility to seek asylum, since they were themselves the victims of fraud.

An Assyrian man himself, Kucam, 44, is a member of Belgium's nationalist Flemish National Alliance (N-VA). Theo Francken, who served as migration minister up until last December and represented the party in the Federal government last year, said that he had not been aware of Kucam's activities and urged for restraint until the results of the investigation were available.

Some politicians in Belgium, however, claim that Kucam could not have acted without Francken's knowledge, since it was the responsibility of the migration minister to make decisions related to humanitarian visas.