Not above board: Baharuddin (second from right) going through a passport, which was among the items seized during Ops Serkap, during a press conference held at the Immigration headquarters in Johor Baru. — THOMAS YONG/The Star
JOHOR BARU: For months, a Bangladeshi has been raking in profits by operating a fake working permit renewal operation that catered to foreign workers.
To make his operation look legitimate, the 26-year-old had registered a company with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM).
But all this has come to a halt when he and two of his workers, a Bangladeshi and a Myanmar, were detained by the Immigration Department in Tampoi at around 1.55pm during Ops Serkap on Tuesday.
Johor Immigration director Baharuddin Tahir said the main suspect claimed to be the chairman of a company here.
“However, we believe the suspect has been running a fake working permit renewal operation and he has been making money from foreign workers since early this year.
“We did a check with the CCM and found that his company was registered in May.
“We believe the reason behind the company registration was to make his operation look authentic to foreign workers.
“His main target was foreign workers who have issues renewing their working permits or applying for the Workforce Recalibration Programme (RTK 2.0),” he told a press conference at the Johor Immigration Department headquarters at the Home Ministry Complex in Setia Tropika here yesterday.
Baharuddin said the syndicate’s approach involved collecting passports from foreign workers’ residences and charging them RM6,500 per application under the RTK 2.0 programme.
During the operation, Immigration officers confiscated several passports, a laptop, an external hard disk containing various RTK 2.0 applications, a mobile phone, and RM2,058 in cash. They also seized a car believed to be owned by the main suspect.
Baharuddin advised the public, especially foreign workers and their employers, that the Immigration Department has never appointed a third party or an agent to act on its behalf to get foreigners to register under the RTK 2.0 programme.
