The witness who came right after Middleton’s short testimony was former Immigration Data Entry Clerk Omar Phillips. He’s one of the 3 officers who got into major trouble for the Citizen Kim passport scandal back in October 2013. He was the one who accepted the passport application file for the South Korean fugitive Won Hong Kim who never set foot on Belizean soil, but who still ended up with a Belize passport that he didn’t qualify for.
So, the Senate went straight to the Won Hong Kim investigation, and they grilled him about the details of the day he accepted the application file at the front desk:

Hon. Aldo Salazar - Chairman, Senate Select Committee
"You remember the Wong Hong Kim application?"

Omar Phillips - Former Data Entry Clerk, Immigration Department
"Yes I do."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"You remember it because-"

Omar Phillips
"It being a situation that came up."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"Okay what was your responsibility in relation to that application?"

Omar Phillips
"At the time I was working the front desk, I was the counter clerk."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"So you were the one who received the Wong Hong Kim application?"

Omar Phillips
"Yes."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"But you were not doing the data capture at the point, it was Mr. Robinson?"

Omar Phillips
"Yes."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"Do you recall receiving this passport application?"

Omar Phillips
"Yes."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"Who did you receive it from?"

Omar Phillips
"Minister Penner."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"Ordinarily you would get the application form from the applicant right?"

Omar Phillips
"Yes."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"But this one Mr. Penner brought it?"

Omar Phillips
"Ordinarily it says that the person should present him or herself to the office so it doesn't necessarily mean you have to hand you the application him or herself."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"Did you see the person who he was with, the applicant?"

Omar Phillips
"Yes."

Hon. Aldo Salazar
"So the applicant was there? How did he dress, do you recall?"

Omar Phillips
"I don't recall the exact but he had on like a suit, I don't recall the exact suit or how to describe it."

Hon. Eamon Courtenay - PUP Senator
"You know Elvin Penner?"

Omar Phillips
"Yes."

Hon. Eamon Courtenay
"What capacity did he go there that day?"

Omar Phillips
"Well he was the minister at the time."

Hon. Eamon Courtenay
"But he didn't come there to perform any ministerial function did he?"

Omar Phillips
"No."

Hon. Eamon Courtenay
"So what capacity did he go there as?"

Omar Phillips
"Well he was doing the transaction."

Hon. Eamon Courtenay
"So a consultant by your definition?"

Hon. Mark Lizarraga - Senator, Business Sector
"The errors begin at your post, what you call it the front desk? Counter clerk. We have been told and in this case obviously we have seen where these mistakes are made and we've seen where the rest of the system depends on the integrity of the information that is collected at the counter clerk. How do you go about verifying that these source documents are legit? Because you play an important role, again everybody points down to your desk and say well we go by what we've seen. Now what I'm trying to understand is what is the process that you go through to verify that those source documents are real.â€￾

Omar Phillips
"What we would consider as the source document would be the birth certificate or the nationality certificate. The recommender form would be an additional to the application form and our job is not verify the signature of the recommender."

Hon. Mark Lizarraga
"Have you been trained to spot irregularities, have you been trained to look at signatures, have you been trained to do any other sort of analysis?"

Omar Phillips
“The only training I got when I entered the department was how to accept the form and how to do the data capture. There are some instances like say if somebody come with a Belizean birth paper but the person doesn't talk English then that would set off an alarm but other than that we didn't get any training per say to spot fraudulent documents or anything like that."

Omar Phillips worked as a Data Entry Clerk for the Immigration Department from 2009 to 2013, when the scandal broke, and his role in the Won Hong Kim scandal became known.