Li Khoo: registration suspended by OMARA on 15 Aug 2024

What the Authority decided

On 15 August 2024, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (the Authority) decided to suspend Agent, Ms Li Lu Khoo (MARN 0001790) from being registered as a migration agent for a period of 18 months and until certain conditions are met, following an investigation into two complaints in relation to the Agent’s conduct.

The Authority found that the Agent breached her obligations under sections 13, 17, 32, 33(c), 39, 40 and 45 as well as Division 5 of the Code of Conduct for registered migration agents.

The Authority found that the Agent:

• Failed to be honest and frank with the Authority by failing to provide the information and documents prescribed in its statutory notices;
• Failed to provide updates to her clients and remain contactable as would be expected of a RMA;
• Failed to complete work for which she was contracted and paid to complete;
• Caused unnecessary expense or delay to her clients; and
• Failed to maintain and keep adequate record keeping practices.

The Authority was also satisfied that the Agent and was not a person of integrity, or otherwise not a fit and proper person to give immigration assistance.

A redacted copy of the decision is available below.

The Agent has lodged an application for review of the decision to suspend her registration with the Administrative Review Tribunal

The decision summary above is reproduced from the Authority's published record of this decision, which also carries the decision document itself. Nothing has been added to it.

What a suspension means if this was your agent

The registration is suspended for a set period. During it the agent may not lawfully give immigration assistance — not to you, not to anyone. Section 280 of the Migration Act makes paid immigration assistance by an unregistered person a criminal offence, and a suspended agent is unregistered for the duration.

This is the outcome that most often catches people mid-matter, because the agent is still there and the suspension has an end date. If your matter can wait, it may be able to wait. If you have a response deadline from the Department inside the suspension period, it cannot.

If this was your agent: the first week

1. Find out where your application actually is. If you have an ImmiAccount, log in. The clock does not stop because your representation did.
2. Check who the Department is writing to. A Form 956 makes an agent the authorised recipient, and correspondence sent to them is taken to have been given to you. A deadline sent to an inbox nobody reads is still a deadline.
3. Get your file. Your documents are yours and the Code requires them back — originals first. How to get your file back.
4. Work out what was paid and what was done. Ask for the itemised invoices and receipts the Code requires. Routes to recover money work better started early.
5. Complain, if there is something to complain about. A published decision does not close your own file. Where to complain, and what OMARA can and cannot do.
6. Only then, find someone else. A new agent needs the file and the dates. The first five steps are what make that first conversation useful instead of exploratory.

What this decision does not mean

It is a decision about one individual on one date. Only a person can be a registered migration agent — a company cannot — so it says nothing about anyone else at the same practice. Decisions of this kind are reviewable, and bars and suspensions expire. The register is where the current position lives.

Decision information sourced from the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence. VisaBid is not affiliated with OMARA or the Department of Home Affairs.