Clerk and nephew arrested in passport theft

After days of intense investigation, today officials charged two men in connection with the theft of a hundred passports from the Belmopan Immigration Office. The accused are an uncle and nephew from San Ignacio and as Assistant Commissioner of Police Eduardo Wade explains, one of the two is an employee of the Immigration Department.

Eduardo Wade, Assistant Commissioner of Police
?They are Julian Francis Garcia, twenty-four years, he?s an electrician by trade from San Ignacio and Marcus Garcia, thirty-nine years, he?s a second class clerk at the Immigration Department here in Belmopan. I want to say that Marcus Garcia has been charged with Theft and Handling of a hundred and forty-six Merit Type Documents or Papers used in preparation of passports and other things from the office here in Belmopan. They have been taken to court. Bail has been offered in the sum of fifty thousand dollars each and one surety of same amount. However, because of the timing of this activity, they will remain in custody until Tuesday.?

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
?With these arrests, is the case over, is the case closed??

Eduardo Wade
?Definitely not. The case is not closed as yet. We will continue to try to recover the other five passports and also to see if they are any other people involved directly or indirectly with this investigation.?

Janelle Chanona
?These two people that you have charged today are they cooperating with your investigation to give you leads in that direction??

Eduardo Wade
?They have cooperated to a certain extent, but we believe they may have more information that may assist us and even with the information that they have provided, we need to follow those up.?

Janelle Chanona
?Have you gotten any information about the remaining five, about where those documents are??

Eduardo Wade
?Not as yet.?

Janelle Chanona
?Have you managed to determine how passports were removed from the office??

Eduardo Wade
?Technically no and we are pursuing that issue. I think that is the crucial part of our investigation at this time to determine who and how those passports came out of that office. That is very crucial at this time.?

Janelle Chanona
?And the role of Ms. Bennett and Ms. Wagner in your investigation??

Eduardo Wade
?Those people are still being investigated. We are not through with the investigation as I mentioned. Once we follow up on all the available leads that have come to us over the past four or five hours then we?ll know if any other people will be detained or charged.?

Late this evening, Belmopan police informed us that Marcus Garcia was bailed by his sister. Garcia was not ordered to surrender his travel documents to the court as part of the conditions of his bail. Both men are scheduled to return to Belmopan’s Magistrate Court on Tuesday. The third man detained as part of the investigation into the theft of the passports has been released.