Email

Print

Last week the news was all about Yuanran Zheng, the Chinese man who was caught with a bogus nationality certificate, and Zheng Hui Lin, his Taiwanese-Belizean translator.  

Zheng left the country on Friday, and, as a Belizean, Lin was free to return to his residence in Camalote after he pleaded guilty to uttering upon a forged document and trying to use that document.  

But, 7News has learned that after questioning those men, police have gathered information which points to a functioning immigration ring, and, reports suggest it involves senior employees of the Department of Immigration and The Social Security Board.  7News has confirmed that one SSB manager has been placed on administrative leave while an internal investigation is underway.  Board Chairman Doug Singh told us it’s not an indictment of this manager, the Board just wants to carry out an investigation without interference.  He confirmed that - apart from any police investigation - Social Security is leading its own internal investigation to determine if there was any collusion with elements of an immigration ring. 

At the Immigration Department our reports say that three more nationality certificates have been found in the system - and they were sent from the Belize City office to Belmopan.  But, this is just the very tip of the iceberg, because multiple sources tell us that there are many more fraudulent nationality certificates out there - and we don't mean 1, or 2, or ten, or one dozen, our sources tell us it’s MANY more.  Apparently some of these nationality documents date way back to the time when there was an economic citizenship program - and no one at the Immigration Department is quite sure if what is surfacing now are falsified versions of those very old certificates.

Reports suggest that they could be coming out of one specific district branch of the Immigration Department, and might have been prepared with the complicity of at least one Immigration Department staffer.  These nationality documents - the old type which have few security features - can be used to fraudulently obtain a Belizean passport and social security card.  The Director of Immigration did not return our requests for comment today.  We’ll try the police tomorrow at their weekly briefing.