Only three weeks have passed since the Interior Ministry’s civil clerks have been awarded the power to issue residency permits to foreigners in the Czech Republic from January and the first legal complaint against bribery has been already filed. The clerks have alerted a police investigator to a seeming trifle – a single box of chocolates.
Foreigners applying for permanent residency in the Czech Republic run a risk if they come to the clerks with a flower or a box of chocolates. The Interior Ministry, which has been deciding about residency permissions since January, wants to fight hard against corruption habits. Only a hint of bribing and a foreigner will no longer have a clean criminal record.
Not even a month has passed since the foreign police’s power to issue permanent residency to foreigners has been transferred to civil clerks. And immediately, they clashed with the existing state of things. “A foreigner left a box of chocolates for a clerk at the counter, so we filed a legal complaint with the police,” Tomáš Haišman, the director at the Ministry’s asylum and immigration policy department described the unusual step. “We have to be uncompromising from the very beginning, otherwise it could reach unimaginable dimensions,” he added.
Bad experience
Clerks that have taken part in anti-corruption training now have to report any hint of bribing if they do not want to risk their job. The case of the “caring” applicant for permanent residency is now being investigated by Prague police.
Until now the foreign police has been issuing the permits. It has been facing criticism for years that it is not flexible enough; foreigners had to wait in long queues and besides that, corruption was a common topic in connection with the application process. A police probe did catch several employees, but they were all only individual cases.
Secret place of work
The new anti-corruption system is allegedly much more elaborate. Besides having instructed its clerks who take foreigners’ applications to report any bribes, the Interior Ministry decided to hide the employees who decide whether a foreigner will be issued a residency permission or not. “They never get in contact with the applicants, their place of work and names are secret,” said the Ministry’s spokeswoman Jana Malíková.
Within three years, the Interior Ministry is planning to take over also the administration of long-term residency permissions from the foreign police.
