Customs Director-General Miguel Cocco Guerrero and Airport Security chief General Luis Dami?n Castro Cruz revealed this week that a number of airport security guards and customs employees working at Las Am?ricas International Airport (AILA) have been caught seeking and taking bribes from travelers by hidden cameras that authorities have installed in the Immigration, Customs and Ambassadorial/VIP sections of the airport. The cameras are monitored by officials of Airport Security, J-2 (Air Force intelligence) and the National Directorate of Investigations (DNI). The two officials said that most of the tourists bothered for bribes were from the U.S. When security officials confronted the bribe-seekers afterward, they usually denied any wrongdoing, only to be shown where they had hidden the U.S. dollars they received and told they were on film and would be dismissed. Cocco and Castro said that in 1998 some 80 employees working at AILA were dismissed for extorting airline passengers.
