Man jailed for taking corrupt payments to process passports

A clerical officer who was paid €12,500 to process five passports for foreign nationals who were not entitled to them has been jailed for two years.

Barry Kindregan (36) also organised passports for two other people but never received the agreed payment for them.

Kindregan, of Downside Heights, Skerries, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four sample charges including possession of a false passport and three charges of corruptly agreeing to accept a sum of money in cash as a reward for providing a passport on dates between August 1st, 2012 and July 2013. He has no previous convictions.

He had been working as an officer in the passport office since 2007 when a colleague approached him in August 2012 and sought advice "for people in South Africa who wanted to get Irish passports".

Kindregan said they would have to look for a foreign birth registration but the colleague spoke to him again some time later and admitted the people in question wouldn’t be entitled to such registration. She asked him if he would be interested in producing passports for them for cash.

He later told gardaí in interview that he considered the proposal for a few days before he agreed to process the applications. He ultimately delivered seven completed passports for South African, Vietnamese, American and Moldovan nationals, back to his colleague.

Genuine remorse

Judge Melanie Greally on Friday noted that Kindregan had come from an excellent family and had expressed genuine remorse, but said she had to balance this against the serious nature of the offence.

She said Kindregan had been in a position of trust and he had not carried out any enquiries about the intended recipients of the passports, so she had to impose a custodial sentence.

The court heard that Kindregan admitted he only checked supporting documentation to make sure the name was spelled properly and acknowledged that he knew the applicants were not entitled to Irish passports.

Detective Garda Joanne O’Sullivan told Cathleen Noctor BL, prosecuting, that an agreement had been reached between Kindregan and his colleague that he would get €1,250 at the start of the application for the passport and a final €1,250 when it was completed.

She agreed that he never received the payment for the first two passports and he contacted gardaí himself, following his arrest for the first two passports, to admit that he had processed a further five.