Passport Scandal Uncovered at Austria’s Embassy in London

Austria’s Foreign Ministry has reported 79 unlawfully issued travel documents involving 39 people at the country’s embassy in London. The documents were issued even though the recipients did not meet the requirement of Austrian citizenship, Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger said in response to a parliamentary inquiry.

The ministry declared the documents invalid and withdrew them. It has not yet clarified whether all 79 were passports. A ministry spokeswoman said officials could not provide further details because doing so might jeopardize ongoing investigations by the Federal Bureau for Anti-Corruption and the relevant prosecutor’s office.

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The issuance was unlawful because the requirement of Austrian citizenship was not met.

Green foreign and European policy spokeswoman Meri Disoski, who submitted the inquiry, said the case raised central security questions. “Seventy-nine unlawfully issued travel documents for 39 people without Austrian citizenship are not a minor matter,” she told APA. Authorities still need to establish who received the documents, how they were used and whether money changed hands, she said.

Asked what disciplinary action had been taken against the suspected embassy employee, Meinl-Reisinger said the person was no longer employed by the Foreign Ministry.

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Seventy-nine unlawfully issued travel documents for 39 people without Austrian citizenship are not a minor matter. To this day, it remains unanswered who received these documents and what they were used for. These are central security questions that must be answered fully.

The irregularities came to light in April after Vienna’s immigration and citizenship authority, MA 35, sent an embassy-issued passport for review and could not find the documentation normally required for its issuance. The embassy alerted the ministry’s central office on April 23, after which internal investigations began and the anti-corruption bureau and prosecutors were notified.

Disoski said the fact that the case emerged only after MA 35 raised questions about the passport indicated that the embassy’s control system may have been circumvented. She said the required checks, including the four-eyes principle, were apparently bypassed through misuse of the information-technology infrastructure.

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We are not talking only about the alleged misconduct of one person. We are talking about a control system that could apparently be circumvented, a general inspection that noticed nothing, and dozens of unlawfully issued travel documents.