Student visa scam: Sri Lanka based finance company provided info for five years

A finance company implicated in student visa fraud in Sri Lanka has been providing information for Immigration New Zealand applications since 2012, radio New Zealand reported.

New Zealand officials are investigating what appears to be extensive and organised fraud, the report said adding that the investigation relate to  a finance company falsifying documents showing students have the required $15,000 in the bank for a student visa.

Immigration New Zealand figures show just over 6500 student visas from Sri Lanka have been approved since 2012.

Stephen Dunstan from Immigration New Zealand said the company had been involved in applications since 2012 but ramped up last year.

"It looks like they became quite big players in 2017... there were applications prior to that but we haven't got evidence that they were involved in fraudulent information at that time."

Their best estimate, he said, was that about 400 applications from 2017 may be questionable.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said officials would scrutinise any student already here if they tried to apply, but otherwise were somewhat hamstrung as the company was supposed to be providing the authenticating information.