Immigration probes Helen Liu marriage Helen Liu leaves the Supreme Court in Sydney in 2011. Businesswoman Helen Liu - a Labor Party donor and benefactor to federal MP Joel Fitzgibbon - faces possible prosecution after the Immigration Department re-opened a probe into her alleged migration fraud. The department re-activated its investigation into Ms Liu and her former Chinese boyfriend after Fairfax Media in April unearthed the identities of a young Australian couple who agreed to marry the pair in order for them to obtain permanent residency. Ms Liu, her family and their companies have donated more than $130,000 to the NSW ALP branch. She also paid for two trips to China for Mr Fitzgibbon in 2002 and 2005, which the then opposition MP failed to declare to Parliament. Helen Liu with John Howard and Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon. A participant in the 1989 sham marriages, Grace Clague, admitted in April that she and her Australian partner at the time agreed to the proposal after being told that Ms Liu and her Chinese boyfriend would be persecuted on return to their homeland. Despite the apparent fear of persecution, Ms Liu has regularly returned to China to do business and was loaned millions of dollars by the Bank of China. She also swore in a Federal Court affidavit in 1997 that her father was a "ranking official" in the Chinese government and many other of her relatives occupied "high-level positions in the Chinese government." The bogus marriages mean statutory declarations sworn by the Chinese pair for the purposes of obtaining residency through marriage to an Australian were false, an offence that can result in imprisonment or revocation of citizenship. Age gap: Ms Liu with her "husband" David Shultz. Guided by migration agents later deregistered for misconduct, Ms Clague married Ms Liu's then boyfriend and business partner, Harry Xu. Ms Clague's boyfriend at the time, David Shultz, married Ms Liu, who was about eight years his senior. The supposed couples never spent a night together and Ms Clague had two of her three children with Mr Shultz while she was supposed to be married to Mr Xu and he was married to Ms Liu. The Australian couple later wed. In April, Ms Clague described her teenage actions as a mistake. "They [Ms Liu and Mr Xu] seemed honest, caring people and I believed their lives were at stake," she said. Grace Clague, Humphrey Xu and Helen Liu. Before publication of the April report, the Immigration Department had shelved a probe into alleged migration fraud involving the Chinese pair after then opposition immigration spokesman and now incoming minister Scott Morrison asked for an investigation. The department made this decision without interviewing any involved party. However, after the emergence of new evidence, including Ms Clague's admissions, an Immigration spokesman told Fairfax Media last month that "investigation into this matter is ongoing." Standard investigation procedures include assessment of all information available to ascertain the likelihood of the availability of admissible evidence to support a prosecution. The department will not release information in relation to this investigation until all the available facts have been considered in full. Commenting on the reopened investigation, incoming foreign minister and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop said: "It is vital that the Department of Immigration thoroughly investigates all allegations of migration fraud to ensure there is integrity in our migration system." Ms Liu's financial support for Mr Fitzgibbon and his father, former Labor MP Eric Fitzgibbon, became public in 2009. In April 2009, former Labor leader Mark Latham, Mr Fitzgibbon's former close friend, wrote in The Australian Financial Review that in regard to the relationship between Ms Liu and Joel and Eric Fitzgibbon, he had "never encountered MPs so engaged, politically and financially, with a business benefactor." Ms Liu did not respond to questions earlier this year about her marriage to Mr Shultz.