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Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"Let me tell you. When documents are brought to the minister to sign, they come with a file and the file is inspected by various immigration officers before it reaches me. So I don't know that I have sign any of these. I would have to see them. Nothing has come to me in that sense. There is an audit report which we have not yet gotten. No detail of the audit has been disclosed to me or my CEO. So I have to wait until that time. But what I can say is this; that if anyone has obtained nationality illegality or by fraud or by any of these things. The law is there to immediately revoke such nationality."

Jules Vasquez
"When this whole Penner scandal exploded, is this the sort of thing you feared knowing that there were so many phantoms in the system in so far as phantom identity, phantom arrivals - all these things that inevitably you would see documents like this eventually coming to light?"

Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"Clearly and that is why we move to strengthen the law and we also move to strengthen the process of arrival and departure in Belize. We now have the Midas system which tracks people coming, tracks people going out. You will note that at all the border point you are fingerprinted, your picture is taken of your eyes and all of that to strengthen this process of this type of thing. So I am not going to say that they are not going to try. There are always people out there who are going to try to beat this system and get around it. A lot of money was involved as I understand to make it very transparent and I am here to say again: when and if and I hope it would be, continuing in this process that anybody who receives any nationality by any fraudulent means, improper documentation etc. will have to deal with the law. Because if I am in the seat, they will be, their nationality will be cancelled and anybody who facilitated that process can face some serious charges."

Jules Vasquez
"Sir, at the end of the day, it's your name on these documents. Is that a subject of personal shame or grief for you, that you in fact ultimately and acting in the best faith - that you ultimately sanctioned these apparently suspicious or fraudulent nationality transactions."

Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"It wouldn't be a matter of shame for me, because I haven't done anything wrong and so there is nothing to be shamed about. But it would be a matter of serious concern to me that in fact files have come to me that was doctored, to which I put my signature."

Hulse says the department also rejected a lot of files, and stressed that since January of 2014 - the law has been changed to become far more stringent: every new citizen is approved by an independent vetting committee.

Later on, you'll hear Hulse talking about a batch of new citizens who were sworn in last week.