The Polish foreign ministry has denied allegations in the Philippines that appointment slots for Polish visas were being sold at exorbitant rates in the South East Asian country’s capital Manila.
Claims of irregularities in the issuance of Polish visas were aired on the popular Philippines’ UNTV News and Rescue programme’s YouTube site on November 28.
On the show, job seekers claimed they had been waiting as long as eight months for an official visa appointment, only to learn that slots may have been blocked and sold online for higher fees.
The official fee for an appointment at the Polish Embassy is 500 Philippine pesos (€8), yet some third parties were allegedly charging up to 30,000 pesos (€500) for “arranging” interviews.
According to Polish news portal Wp.pl‘s investigation published on January 5, Polish businessmen working in the Philippines claimed they had raised concerns with the foreign ministry about the visa issuing process back in August.
They also said they had warned that Filipinos attempting to work in Poland claimed they had to pay bribes to obtain Polish visas on time to start their period of employment.
When asked by Brussels Signal about the allegations, the Polish foreign ministry acknowledged visa demand in the Philippines currently exceeded supply.
“Due to the high demand and low supply of slots, all available appointments are taken within minutes of being released,” a ministry spokesperson said.
The ministry denied its staff had been involved in any visa scams, adding its embassy “occasionally receives emails, mostly from people who fell victim to fraud, about offers to sell appointment slots online”.
“These are scams, as neither individuals nor companies can preregister appointments in the official BLS International [appointments] system.”
The ministry maintained that the embassy had not identified any wrongdoing and that operators conducted ongoing monitoring of the system.
It also pointed out that in March 2024 the system was assessed positively by the Schengen evaluation mission, which did not uncover any irregularities in the visa-issuing process in the Philippines.
Allegations of visas being obtained irregularly became a bugbear for the previous Polish Conservative (PiS) government. In 2023 it was alleged that many thousands of Schengen and work visas were obtained illicitly through companies selling access to consulate officials.
The PiS government investigated the allegations and found that several hundred rather than hundreds of thousands of visas were involved. As a result, one deputy minister and several intermediaries involved were indicted.
A parliamentary investigative committee was set up in 2024 to look into the issuing of Polish visas.
The country’s State audit body (NiK) investigated and identified potentially problematic procedural issues with the way visas had been issued over past years.
