Is Another Passport Scandal Looming Over Immigration Department

There is a very credible report into our newsroom tonight and it is that another passport fiasco is swirling around the Minister of Immigration, Godwin Hulse.  It involves the illegal issuance of a Belizean passport and nationality to a national who claims to have citizenships from many countries.  The new passport was recently issued to Tony Alan Pugliese who purports to also possess Italian and Salvadoran nationalities. Here is what we know, Pugliese’s date of birth of September twenty-second, 1953. He turned up at the Immigration Department in Belmopan three weeks ago on January seventh, with an urgent application for a new Belize passport claiming that the previous one, number 0249782, was damaged.  Pugliese paid for a one day service to obtain his new passport and soon enough it was granted to him.  But alarm bells went off when it was detected that the old passport had not been issued by the Immigration Department or Belizean authorities. That passport has been traced to be among a batch of stolen passports. And from what we know, Immigration officials at the P.G.I.A. and other points of entry have been instructed to detain Pugliese and recover the new passport. It is also known that the whole thing is being kept quietly because of the March fourth municipal elections and because of the scandal involving the former minister of state Elvin Penner who was found to have illegally issued a passport to a Korean fugitive.