New Zealand's top immigration official has been found to have broken department rules while helping foreign family members come into the country and get residency.
ONE News has discovered Mary Anne Thompson, the head of New Zealand's Immigration Service, personally escorted relatives from the tiny Pacific island of Kiribati into New Zealand.
And then another official approved residency applications, again against department policy.
Kauri Katekeimoa, originally from Kiribati, is now a New Zealand resident.
ONE News has revealed he should never have been granted residency. And the investigation into this blunder has gone right to the top of the Immigration Service, to Thompson, its deputy secretary who just happens to be Katekeimoa's aunt.
Katekeimoa says Thompson organised his visa to come to New Zealand, but says he does not know how she did that.
Documents obtained by ONE News under the Official Information Act reveal the head of the Immigration Service organised visa waivers for her nephew Katekeimoa and another relative from Kiribati to come to NZ on holiday in 2004.
Visa waivers are usually only granted in emergencies. But emails obtained by ONE News show the waiver was granted to save the family the inconvenience of getting proper visas.
Thompson even flew into Auckland with those relatives and then five months later, she brought two more in and put them all up in her Wellington home.
In New Zealand for a holiday, Thompson's family never left.
Her nephew says Thompson, and her husband, Baerauti, helped them fill out residency application forms.
"They ask me if I want to stay. Yes I want to stay because I just realise I like here much better," says Katekeimoa.
The Immigration head did this, openly declaring on immigration forms that she had helped with the application.
But there were big problems with Katekeimoa and his family's residency application. The quota from Kiribati was full and New Zealand was not accepting any more immigrants from there, and the application was lodged outside the allocated timeframe.
Despite all these issues, the head of immigration's family were fast-tracked through and made New Zealand residents.
Aussie Malcolm, a former immigration minister turned immigration consultant, has strong views on the issue of how immigration officials should act.
"If an immigration staff member arranged to bring family members into New Zealand without visas, without return tickets, without funds, without sponsorship and gave them residence without proper procedure, against policy, they would be fired," says Malcolm.
ONE News has also spoken to a current immigration official who gave their opinion.
"The special treatment given to Thompson's extended family is a poorly kept secret within the department. If Mary Anne Thompson has breached the code of conduct, why has she not been disciplined like other staff in similar situations?" says the official.
The Department of Labour administers the New Zealand Immigration Service. Its chief executive, Chris Blake is Thompson's boss and he says she has twice been directed to stay out of decision making involving her family's immigration matters.
"I would like to point out that I don't think any of this is satisfactory and that the department needs to actually perform these functions in a better way than they have been doing," says Blake.
And while the department's investigation into Thompson's family found she did not directly influence the decision to give them residency, she did break some rules in the department's code of conduct by failing to tell her boss she was helping her family get into New Zealand.
Thompson was not disciplined but one of her staff was given a formal warning for approving her family's residency application.
And Kauri Katekeimoa says he does not know how his holiday at his aunt's turned into a new life in New Zealand.
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