PUTRAJAYA: The Immigration Department has not recorded any new arrests linked to the Ops Crack syndicate but will continue taking action if it receives information on the group’s activities.
Immigration director-general Datuk Zakaria Shaaban said the latest arrests involved three Immigration officers who were suspected of being part of the syndicate’s network about two weeks ago.
“The latest arrests were made two weeks ago, involving three Immigration officers suspected of being involved in the syndicate’s network. We have taken action to arrest them for further action,” he said at a press conference here on Thursday (Aug 13).
He said the department had yet to receive information on any new arrests, but investigations and monitoring would continue.
In a related development, he said the Immigration Department had also taken action against Temporary Employment Visit Pass (PLKS) holders involved in the illegal issuance of the passes by blacklisting them in the Immigration system.
“They cannot carry out any transactions or dealings unless they have enquiries and so on. In such cases, they need to refer to the relevant Immigration counters,” he said.
He said efforts were ongoing to track down the PLKS holders, including through several raids at locations recorded in the department’s system.
However, these efforts have been hampered by discrepancies between the premises addresses and employer details stated in the PLKS records.
“When we went to the locations, the premises were different from those stated in the PLKS. The employer details were also different. This means they used someone else’s address. The address was also fake.
“That is among the modus operandi they used. But we will continue our efforts to track them down,” he said.
Ops Crack was previously linked to a syndicate believed to have manipulated the Immigration system to facilitate the illegal issuance of PLKS.
Earlier media reports said that Ops Crack was launched by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in collaboration with the Immigration Department (JIM) on July 28, with more than 10 individuals arrested, including company directors, foreign nationals, police personnel and Immigration officers.
A total of 1,306 PLKS were found to have been illegally approved at various locations nationwide, involving multiple sectors.
Zakaria was reported to have said that “insiders” within the Immigration Department who knew how to exploit the Malaysian Immigration System (MyIMMs) were involved in the syndicate’s hacking activities to facilitate the illegal approval of PLKS.
The individuals allegedly used dongles and software installed on computers to access the system remotely using an administrator ID before creating fake IDs to approve the PLKS irregularly.
