Mr. Soto was assigned to work at the Embassy of Venezuela in Iraq. As
he began to work there, he noticed some irregularities, so he began to
report what he says was a scheme to sell passports and visas for
thousands of dollars out of that Embassy. He was offered all kinds of
money to do this, to get a cut of those thousands of dollars. He says
he declined it. CNN and CNN en Espanol have over the last year teamed up on a joint
investigation, relying on much of the same information that I have had
access to, looking into all of these allegations and what they
uncovered. In the story that posted tonight was evidence of serious
irregularities in the issuing of Venezuela passports and visas,
including passports that were given to people with ties to terrorism. According to CNN, one confidential intelligence document obtained by
CNN--intelligence documents from nations in the Western Hemisphere, not
from the United States--actually directly links Venezuela's now new
Vice President, who is in line to potentially become the President when
the current dictator is going to have to give up power here soon
because of this cataclysm that they are facing--the name of that Vice
President is Tareck El Aissami. There are now links, according to CNN,
to the current Vice President, Tareck El Aissami, and the 173
Venezuelan passports and IDs that were issued to individuals from the
Middle East, including people connected to the terrorist group
Hezbollah. It is important to understand--and the CNN article appropriately
outlines this--if you have a passport from Venezuela, you are allowed
to enter over 130 countries on this planet without a visa. That
includes the 26 countries in the European Union. So a Venezuelan
passport is a valuable commodity for someone who is trying to travel
around the world under an assumed name with a valid government
document.
Keywords matched
visa visas