The Department of Immigration is tonight reeling because it has been confirmed that 100 passports have been stolen from the Department Office in Belmopan. Director Carmen Zetina confirmed that he was called to the office of the financial officer this morning at 10:30 where he was told that a parcel with 100 passports had gone missing. Zetina made a personal check to see that they were missing. He then determined that there were no signs of forced entry, burglary or any tampering with the safe that the passports are stored in. He told us that without doubt it is an inside job. And going inside, Zetina explained that the Finance Officer has primary responsibility for the vault where the passports are kept. She was out of the office on leave for 18 calendar days - and left her second in charge in the office. When she returned this morning, she discovered the missing passports when her deputy was handing over. Both women have been taken in for questioning and remain at the Belmopan Police Station tonight.
Zetina says the Finance Officer is the only person who has a key for the vault and stressed that absolutely no-one else, himself included, has a key for the safe.
While 100 passports were stolen, Zetina estimated that 800 to 900 were left in the safe. He says that security for the passports has been upgraded since August of 2005 when 200 of them were stolen from a lightly secured storage room. Two of those passports were encountered by authorities in Hong Kong where they were being used by Chinese nationals.
Zetina adds that the fact that these two were found in usage tells him that the machine-readable passports are not as completely invulnerable to fraud as they are reputed to be, and that there is a thriving, lucrative black market where such blank documents are traded. He suspects that whoever orchestrated this theft sold them on that market.
And while the cumulative weight of all this should be enough to make your head spin, consider the fact that in 13 months, 300 machine readable passports have gone missing, 298 are still unaccounted for, and no one has been criminally charged.
