About 80 per cent of staff working at New Zealand’s visa application centre in Beijing are direct employees of a company owned by the Beijing police, inflaming concerns that the Chinese government could gain access to information about citizens trying to leave the country.

Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi said he was happy with security arrangements at the centre, which the Government says protects the privacy of people applying for visas.

But the practice has caused grave concern in other countries using similar arrangements.

“I cannot think of a more promising entry point for China’s cyberspies,” said Richard Fadden, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Fadden told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper that Ottawa should end the arrangement in Beijing to make sure “an instrument of the Chinese government” cannot possibly have access to immigration and refugee data.

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In New Zealand’s case, the company that manages New Zealand’s offshore visa applications, VFS Global, subcontracts its work in Beijing to another company, Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service Company. That entity is partly owned by the municipal Public Security Bureau, a feared arm of the security apparatus that controls movements inside and out of China.

Companies operating in China must partner with a local company, but not all those companies are owned by organisations like the police. Australia, despite also contracting work to VFS, doesn’t use the same company as New Zealand in Beijing.

Immigration NZ and VFS Global’s parent company said there were strict data security measures in place to make sure that no subcontractors could access private data and that only authorised staff who are strictly vetted can work in visa centres.

The 80 per cent ratio was similar to what would be seen in other offices worldwide and most of the workers were administrative, said Peter Brun of VFS Global.

”Only authorised employees are allowed to work in our visa application centres,” he said in a statement. “All employees undergo a deep identity, credit, and criminal record check before being hired,” he said.

Canada’s Beijing visa application office uses the same police-owned company. An investigation by the Globe and Mail found that 86 per cent of staff were employees of the police-owned company.

Faafoi and the New Zealand Government have said they were aware from the outset that the application centre had a connection to the Chinese police, but Immigration NZ has maintained that “the Beijing Public Security Bureau has no ownership of, or connection to, INZ’s Beijing visa processing office”.

Faafoi said he was still happy with security at the centre.

“What I was told is when the centre was set up, [before] our time in government, those concerns were flagged and processes were put in place to mitigate concerns at the time,” Faafoi said.

Officials had recently checked on the centre and were happy with the arrangements, he said. “Recently I think they've had the opportunity to do a regular check on whether those processes to mitigate are still fit for purpose, and they have said ‘yes’.”