The Foreign Service Journal, June 2010

J U N E 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 31 F O C U S O N T H E C O N S U L A R F U N C T I O N W HEN G OOD O FFICERS G O B AD magine starting a new job as chief of a consular section, only to learn that one of your prede- cessors was just arrested for helping young women falsify their non-immigrant visa applications. A few days later, three of your senior local employees confide that they think the guy was stealing money, too. Or perhaps you’re the new officer responsible for recording and reconciling consular fee collections. Thankfully, you see that the Consular Training Division at the Foreign Service Institute has an online training course on these duties. After completing the course, you begin to notice discrepancies in the cashier’s end-of-day reports. You report your findings, provoking a major in- vestigation that reveals the theft of more than half a mil- lion dollars from U.S. government funds over the past six years. Or perhaps you notice one of your colleagues making inappropriate comments to visa applicants and initiating contact with them outside the office. Unfortunately, those examples are not merely hypo- thetical. They represent the cases of a former consular officer in Berlin, a consular cashier in Singapore, and vice consuls in Brazzaville and Sao Paulo, respectively. Their mug shots join those of others (including non-con- sular employees) on the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Malfeasance Indictments intranet Web page, also known as the “Wall of Shame.” Addressing Vulnerabilities The Consular Integrity Division, part of the Bureau of Consular Affairs’ Office of Fraud Prevention Pro- grams, is a joint collaboration with the Bureau of Diplo- matic Security’s Criminal Investigations Division. CID identifies vulnerabilities in our processes and systems in order to prevent their exploitation, while DS and the Of- fice of the Inspector General investigate individual acts of employee malfeasance or lapses in professional re- sponsibility. The jointly staffed division supports the in- vestigation of the individual offenders. While criminal prosecutions are typically high-profile and garner significant press attention, they are only a small part of CID’s overall effort. Since 2003, CA has conducted a multifaceted strategy to prevent and miti- gate vulnerabilities that may provide opportunities for malfeasance: employees providing consular services or T HE C ONSULAR I NTEGRITY D IVISION USES LESSONS LEARNED FROM PAST MALFEASANCE TO HEAD OFF FUTURE INCIDENTS . B Y R OBERT W. T HOMAS I Robert “Robby” Thomas, a consular Foreign Service offi- cer since 2001, is a senior watch officer in the Department of State Operations Center. Before that, he served as chief of the joint Consular Affairs-Diplomatic Security Consular Integrity Division. His overseas assignments include Nouakchott, Toronto and Abidjan.