Passports for criminals? News 5 asks GOB for list

Last week a News Five investigation revealed that a member of an Indian terrorist organization purchased a Belizean passport while incarcerated in a Canadian prison. Since that time, a number of reports have reached our newsroom of other “economic citizens”, whose past activities in their home countries raise grave doubts about the vetting procedures used by the present and past administrations in charge of Belize’s successive citizenship programs. In order to verify these allegations News Five today asked the Ministry of National Security, through BECIP, the Belize Economic Citizenship Investment Program, to release the full list of all those people who have purchased Belizean nationality since the program began in 1985. In response to the request, BECIP’s director, Joey Belisle, said that he had no access to records prior to his appointment in 1998. As for those new citizens issued documents since his appointment, Belisle maintained that such information is confidential and he could not comply with the request. Obviously not satisfied with the response to what seemed to be a reasonable question, News Five then contacted permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security and Immigration, Alan Usher. Usher’s position was a bit more sympathetic, saying that the list was “no great national secret” but that he would have to first consider the issue of privacy. Usher promised to get back to News Five as soon as possible, but a quick reading of the latest policy documents shows no reference at all to question of privacy. Most of the provisions in fact, deal with the safeguarding of government’s money, namely forty thousand US dollars per citizen. At the same time News Five is seeking to determine exactly how much revenue has been brought in through the sale of passports in the last fifteen years and has made a formal request to the Ministry of Finance, through the Press Office. According to its 1998 election manifesto, as well as subsequent pronouncements, the question of economic citizenship is to be put to the public in the form of a referendum. No date for the vote has been set.