Immigration New Zealand has repaid about $44,000 in infringement fines to 21 companies after discovering that staff who issued the notices did not have the correct delegations — legal permissions — to do so, RNZ reports.

The problem came down to acting managers who approved the fines without the authority to sign them off. INZ withdrew 23 infringement notices in total, most from 2024. By the time the error was identified, the three-month window to reissue notices for the same offence had closed, so the agency could not recover the penalty money.

The delegation error led to other mistakes. INZ applied 12-month stand-down periods to 17 companies when the law specifies six months. All 21 affected companies were notified and removed from the public stand-down list. For the eight whose employer accreditation had been revoked, INZ waived the reapplication fees.

Most of the affected companies were small operators. Of the 21, five were not accredited employers; the other 16 employed 55 migrants combined. The maximum infringement fine is $3,000 per company for offences like employing someone without a valid visa, failing to provide documents, or operating without accreditation — and $1,000 for individuals. The $44,000 total across 21 companies suggests most were fined at or near the maximum.

INZ informed the responsible minister about the errors. In the 2024/25 financial year, INZ fined 118 employers in total, meaning the flawed notices account for roughly one in five of all enforcement actions that year — a significant proportion that raises questions about how delegation chains were being managed during a period when INZ faced considerable operational strain.

For practitioners working with the accredited employer work visa (AEWV) framework — which regulates who can employ migrant workers — the stand-down list is an active enforcement tool. Employers on it cannot recruit new migrants, which carries real business consequences. Having 17 companies subject to a stand-down period twice as long as the law allows — and listed publicly in the meantime — affects employment contracts, sponsorship arrangements, and sometimes the ongoing visa conditions of the migrants themselves.

For context: Uber remains on the current INZ employer stand-down list, showing that enforcement under the AEWV scheme now extends beyond the small-business operators who made up most of this batch of errors.

The delegation gap INZ has identified is a procedural failure with a specific technical cause, but the consequences compound quickly: unenforceable notices, wrongly-extended stand-downs, and waived fees. INZ has not publicly set out what changes to its internal authorisation processes have followed, and it is unclear whether the minister has sought formal assurance that the delegation registers are now correct across the agency's compliance work.