Germany Seeks Answers From Poland in a Visa Fraud Scandal Involving Migrants From Asia and Africa

BERLIN (AP) German government officials held talks Tuesday with their Polish counterparts asking them to clarify how many visas were issued in an illegal program in which some Polish consulates issued visas in Africa and Asia in exchange for bribes, an official said.

Poland has been shaken for weeks by reports that its consular sections issued about 250,000 visas to migrants from Asia and Africa since 2021 in return for bribes of several thousand dollars each. Poland is a member of the EUs visa-free zone known as Schengen, and once those migrants arrived in Poland they could cross Europes borders freely including into neighboring Germany.

Warsaw's conservative government confirms that some wrongdoing has occurred, and authorities have made some arrests and dismissals, but they insist that the scale isn't as great as what the Polish media have said.