Tens of thousands of Ugandan and Kenyan citizens might have obtained ID and false medical certificates in exchange for money so that they could resettle in Western Europe with the help of the UNHCR staff. The corruption case being investigated by UNHCR has been uncovered by the German magazine Stern. Jorg Meuthen, co-leader of the German anti-immigration AfD party, says Chancellor Angela Merkel had also supported illegal resettlement.

For years, UNHCR staff have made it possible to African citizens to settle in Western Europe for about 2,500 dollars per person. According to an investigative report by German magazine Stern, some corrupt staff members of the UNHCR issued ID documents and obtained fake medical certificates for wealthy African migrants to be included in the world organisation s resettlement programme. Occasionally, Ugandan and Kenyan citizens were excluded from the list although they paid for the false documents as their IDs had been sold to others by the UN officials.

The UNHCR refugee programme primarily focuses on helping politically persecuted individuals or those having a disease incurable in Africa. However, with only 50 to 60,000 people being relocated each year, many are not included in the list despite paying to corrupt officials, Stern writes. UNHCR s Geneva headquarters has confirmed to the German magazine that they indeed have evidence of cases of official corruption in Uganda and Kenya. According to the organisation s spokesman, UNHCR will launch an internal investigation once sufficient information has been gathered.

Jorg Meuthen, co-leader of the anti-Immigration Anternative for Germany (AfD) party, expressed his indignation in a lengthy Facebook post on Friday. „Resettlement” is a milder  word for relocation, and that is exactly what this programme is about: the relocation of African people mainly to Europe, often to Germany. Unfortunately, such programmes are still fulfilling the long-awaited dream of the Chancellor,” Meuthen said. The AfD party leader also shared a video in which Chancellor Angela Merkel said in November 2015, shortly after opening the German borders for migrants, „I will fight to implement my plan ( ) to make the illegal legal, and I will do my utmost to achieve that.„

„It s hard to believe a German Chancellor said that after having taken an oath to protect the German people from all evil,” Meuthen commented on Merkel s words. „Those who want to put an end to this people smuggling – and this is exactly what we offer as an alternative, for Germany and not against it – should join us in building a European fortress which no one we don t want can enter,” Meuthen, also the EP-representative of the party, added.

As a result of Merkel s Willkommenspolitik, Germany has received 1.796 million immigrants since 2015, the beginning of the migrant crisis. About a quarter of those migrants came from Africa.