The Migration Department has suspended and indicted the director of the Investigations Department and the official responsible for the Consular Section, and adopted strict controls to allow all people connected to municipalities to leave the country on official passports. Diario Libre reports that Migration Director Carlos Amarante Baret announced that his department was working with judicial authorities in the investigation of the passport fraud involving mayors and councilmen from different municipalities. The fraudulent passports were used for travel abroad, particularly to Europe. Amarante Baret said that lieutenant colonel Francisco Romer Lopez and retired captain Eugenio Dario Diaz Fajardo, Directors of Investigations and the Consular Section, respectively, were being sought for questioning by the Attorney General’s department, for having issued certificates authorizing individuals involved in the official passport “mafia” to travel abroad. However, he stated that the Migration Department’s authorization had been issued after the authenticity of the passports had been confirmed with the Ministry of Foreign Relations. He sustained that the AG department must continue its investigation both in the Migration Department and the Ministry of Foreign Relations because the passports that were issued were not counterfeit.