A former immigration officer has been sentenced for approving her brother-in-law’s visa application. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
A former immigration officer has received a suspended prison sentence for abuse of public office in which she illegally accessed data and approved a visa application for her brother-in-law.
While employed by the Department of Home Affairs between 2016 and 2021, Anne McCann made unauthorised access to restricted data of 17 individuals held within the department’s computer systems.
The records accessed included those of friends and associates and totalled 1164 occasions.
In November 2019, McCann’s brother-in-law had his visitor visa application refused.
He reapplied for the visa on 6 December 2019 and within approximately 16 minutes of lodgement, McCann self-allocated the application to herself as the visa decision-maker.
McCann subsequently approved the visitor visa three days later.
Following a guilty plea, McCann was convicted of one count of Abuse of Public Office, contrary to section 142.2(2) and one count of Unauthorised Access to Restricted Data, contrary to section 478.1(1) of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth).
She was sentenced to an aggregate term of eight months imprisonment, to be released forthwith on the condition she enter into a recognisance in the sum of $10,000 to be of good behaviour for 12 months.
The sentence stems from Operation Carbunup, a joint investigation commenced by the former Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and Home Affairs and continued by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) from 1 July 2023.
The matter was prosecuted by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (Cth).
This is the ninth conviction obtained in matters continued by the NACC since July 2023.
In a separate matter involving a NACC investigation and Home Affairs, which did not result in legal charges, an unnamed Senior Executive Service Band 1 officer was found to have engaged in corrupt conduct on multiple occasions.
As reported on Monday (30 June) the NACC published the report of its Operation Kingscliff investigation into the department’s high ranking officer.
It found she had abused her office to give her sister and her sister’s fiancé an improper benefit and engaged in further corrupt conduct by misusing official information.
The SES officer has already resigned from the APS, with National Anti-Corruption Commissioner Paul Brereton saying if she had not done so he would have recommended her employment be terminated.
“The APS Ethical Value is to demonstrate leadership, be trustworthy and act with integrity,” he said.
“The conduct demonstrated by the above findings is antithetical to those values.
“Had [she] remained an APS employee, I would have made a recommendation, for the purposes of subsection 15(2) of the Public Service Regulations 2023 (Cth), to terminate her employment.
“As she has resigned from the APS, this would now be superfluous.
“The loss, as result of the exposure of her corrupt conduct, of her APS appointment and career and the associated financial loss of salary and other benefits and the adverse impact of her conduct on her mental health and her consciousness of its impact on her family members are significant repercussions of her conduct.”
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
