Passport sales finally halted

After much hemming, hawing and delayed promises, government has announced that the sale of Belizean passports has finally come to an end. The death of the latest version of the money-raising scheme, known as the Belize Economic Citizenship Investment Programme, was made possible by the passage of a constitutional amendment on January fifteenth. According to a release from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the BECIP office has been closed and its staff has been reassigned to other government offices. In keeping with its long history of secrecy, ministry officials today declined to return phone calls requesting information on how much money the programme has taken in since its inception in the mid 1980s and whether or not there were any applications still in the pipeline. The sale of passports has been plagued by accusations of lax administration and oversight, particularly following revelations that economic citizenship was granted to an Indian jailed in Canada on suspicion of terrorism, as well as a reputed Mexican drug kingpin, now remanded in Hattieville on charges of trafficking over three thousand pounds of cocaine. How many other criminal suspects may be in possession of fraudulently bought Belizean passports may never be known as the government has consistently refused to publish a list of buyers.