BOLIVIA: Bolivian police arrest seven Chinese citizens and one Bolivia in connection with a people-trafficking scandal

The arrest of Chinese citizen Bin Xin Zhang Zhang in Bolivia on Monday (September 4) has led Bolivian police to uncover a ring of people traffickers, and a passport falsification scandal that implicates the country's Foreign Ministry and officials from the current and previous governments. Statements made by Zhang Zhang led investigators to officials from the country's Foreign Ministry and Migration Ministry, as well as implicating a former government assistant Juncar Zeballos and MAS deputy Jose Bailaba. Zhang Zhang is accused of falsifying passports for Chinese citizens looking to use them to travel to the United States and Europe. Government Minister Alicia Munoz said the arrest of Zhang Zhang and others in connection with the same case were part of an investigation to expose a gang of people traffickers and a ring of corruption that extended to government officials. "(The arrests were made) to be able to find the ball of the corruption that has to do with this entry under different guises not just of Chinese citizens but of other types of citizens," she said at a news conference in La Paz on Tuesday (September 5). Police raided three addresses in the Bolivian capital on Tuesday in connection with the case, arresting six Chinese citizens, four men and one woman, at one apartment. A Bolivian citizen was also arrested in a subsequent raid. According to local media, fourteen members of the previous parliament and two from the current one had requested visas to allow Chinese citizens entry into Bolivia. In one case, it was found that the project cited for the visas did not exist. It is believed that dozens of Chinese citizens have entered Bolivia in the past few weeks hoping to become citizens, through marriages of convenience or the falsification of passports, in the hope of obtaining Bolivian passports to travel to the US or Europe, where Bolivian nationals are more readily accepted.

ITN Source | September 7, 2006

Tags:. .become. .investigators. .investigation. .few. .believed