The fake travel documents let the asylum seekers enter Australia on commercial flights instead of fishing boats. 

Travelers into Australia with passports issued from the Gulf States, namely Bahrain and Oman, may well come under greater scrutiny after media reports that fake Australian passports and travel documents are being sold in Malaysia.

Lebanese nationals have been targeted by a syndicate offering travel documents for up to $16,000, an investigation and report by the ABC Four Corners program has revealed.

“In a series of meetings in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur [in November 2013], an Iraqi national known as Abu Tarek was secretly filmed offering the travel documents to potential customers”, the ABC reported.

The syndicate’s operations involved providing asylum seekers travel documents to board the flights to Australia with instructions that they destroy the documents prior to arriving in Australia and then seek asylum upon arriving at an Australian airport. 

The travel documents essentially let the asylum seekers enter Australia on commercial flights instead of fishing boats. 

DIBP figures indicate that the number of Lebanese applying for asylum at Australian airports has jumped from 182 to 327 in the past year. DIBP has today tweeted a warning about the Malaysian scam.

By Jerry Gomez, Editor, Migration Alliance