PM Says Evidence Doesn’t Point to Immigration Wrongdoing 

Joshua Ashburn, the Belize City businessman caught with passports, immigration documents, and stamps, is now facing a slew of immigration charges. Today, Prime Minister John Briceño addressed reporters, stating that, based on the evidence so far, there’s nothing to suggest any immigration officials were involved. It seems Ashburn acquired the fraudulent stamps on his own, and now he’ll have to face the consequences.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“They created their own stamps, so it’s a fraudulent stamp. It’s not from the Ministry, as I pointed out from early and early on is that when this first came to my attention, my first thing was to tell the Commissioner of Police, do your full investigation and go after whosoever is responsible and not going to protect them. Well, yesterday, Commissioner Williams called me to say we finished the investigation, we’ve charged this gentlemen, and they could find no evidence to show that there was collusion within the Ministry of Immigration. But should we find data that there was collusion, we’re going to go after those, people within the Immigration Department, if that were to come out.”

 

Marion Ali

“My thinking is, how would he have been able to come into possession of passports, visas, immigration stamps, etc.?”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Well, from what I’ve been told, you see a stamp, you could go somewhere and I could do a stamp for you anywhere – Belize, Chetumal, United States. So he went and, based on the stamp on a passport or wherever he got it, he just copied it. So that’s that one. But secondly, the Commissioner has been trying to find the owners of the passports. The passports are not fraudulent passports. They’re legal and one of the persons whose passport was there and they interviewed, the person’s stories that this gentleman told them, we can get your visa for you. So they gave him the passport, hoping that they can get the visa. At least that’s the story that they’re saying. So we have to go by that until we can have more evidence. But as I said, up to now, there’s no evidence to point that officials from the Ministry of Immigration was anyway involved in this matter.”