OFFICIALS were yesterday left scrambling to explain how 50 blank passports fell off the back of an Interior Ministry truck in Nicosia.
Investigations are under way as to how exactly the three men transporting the passports managed to lose them in the short distance between the Interior and Finance Ministries in Nicosia.
Officials did not realise the passports were missing until the count at the Interior Ministry fell 50 passports short.
In the meantime, they had been found by taxi driver Nicos Papachristodoulou, who noticed two boxes on the side of the road on Byron Avenue next to the traffic lights and close to the Interior Ministry. Papachristodoulou was stunned when he opened the boxes and found the brand new passports inside.
He telephoned Politis newspaper telling reporters on duty that he would deliver them the passports he had just found.
The 50 blank passports, numbered E246901 to E246950, did not contain official government seals, pictures or names.
Nicosia CID were soon notified of the passports and officers rushed to the newspaper offices to pick them up.
It was later discovered that the passports must have somehow dropped out of the pick-up truck taking the passports to the Ministry.
Fake passports can fetch as much as £2,000 each on the black market – meaning the two boxes could have landed criminals as much as £100,000.
Running the story on its front page yesterday, Politis slammed the government’s inability to provide secure transport for such important documents.
The Director of Civil Registry and Migration Department Annie Shakalis said yesterday she believed the boxes may have fallen out of the pick-up truck when the driver hit the breaks suddenly at the traffic lights.
Shakalis added the taxi driver “most likely saw the boxes fall out of the pick-up truck” and asked why he did not hand the passports straight to the Ministry of Interior or to the police. She expressed her disappointment that “the taxi driver proceeded to open the box, even though the boxes were clearly labeled as containing passports.”
Calling a news conference yesterday, the Permanent Secretary of the Interior Ministry Lazaros Savvides assured the public that the matter was being looked into very seriously, adding the way in which official documents were transported would have to be reconsidered.
“We would like to apologise for this unfortunate incident,” he told reporters. “It is unfortunately apparent that we now need to look into the procedures for transporting official documents.”
Savvides added: “We would also like to take this opportunity to say thank you, not just to the taxi driver who handed the passports to a reliable organisation, as was the newspaper in question, but also to the newspaper for alerting the police straight away.”
The three ministry employees, who were in the pick-up truck, had been suspended pending the investigation, Savvides said.
Another three employees from the Interior Ministry are also to be questioned tomorrow, along with the three who were in the car.
He added there was no criminal or disciplinary investigation taking place at present, as it was still unclear how the passports ended up on the road.
“The Minister has instructed the relative authorities to appoint an independent investigator to find out what happened.”
