Venezuelan passport

Part of a document sent by Misael López Soto to his superiors regarding irregularities at the Venezuelan embassy in Iraq.

On 8 February 2017, a joint CNN and CNN en Español investigation called "Passports in the Shadows" (Spanish: Pasaportes en la sombra) - based on the information provided by a whistleblower and subsequent investigations, reported that employees of the Venezuelan embassy in Baghdad, Iraq has been selling passports and visas to persons from Middle Eastern countries (specifically Syria, Palestine, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan) with dubious backgrounds for profits, including to members of the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The Venezuelan immigration department, SAIME, confirmed the sold passports' genuineness as each passport came with an assigned national identification number, although the names of these individuals were altered when checking against the national database. At least one individual's place of birth was also changed from Iraq to Venezuela. According to Misael López Soto, a former employee at the Venezuelan embassy in Iraq who was also a lawyer and CICPC officer, the Bolivarian government would sell authentic passports to individuals from the Middle East, with the Venezuelan passport able to access 130 countries throughout the world without a visa requirement. López provided CNN documents showing how his superiors attempted to cover up the sale of passports, which were being sold from $5,000 to $15,000 per passport. López Soto fled the Venezuelan embassy in Iraq in 2015 to meet with the FBI in Spain, with a Venezuelan official who assisted him to fly out of the country being killed the same day. The investigation also found that between 2008 and 2012, Tareck El Aissami ordered for hundreds of Middle Eastern individuals to obtain illegal passports, including members of Hezbollah.[9][10]

The Venezuelan foreign minister, Delcy Rodriguez, denied the government's involvement when questioned by the reporters during the Seventy-first session of the United Nations General Assembly and accused the network of performing what she described as an "imperialistic media operation" against Venezuela for airing the year-long fraud investigation.[11]

On 14 February 2017, Venezuelan authorities ceased the broadcasting of CNN en Español two days after the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, ordered CNN to "(get) well away from here".[12][13] The government deemed the report "(A threat to) the peace and democratic stability of our Venezuelan people since they generate an environment of intolerance."[14] Venezuelan National Commission of Telecommunications director Andrés Eloy Méndez accused CNN en Español of instigating religious, racial and political hatred, violence and other themes.[15][16]

In March 2017, it was reported that SAIME lacks enough "materials" to cope with demands for passports. As a result, only approximately 300,000 passports were issued in 2016 while between 1.8 million and 3 million Venezuelans applied for passports. SAIME launched an online platform for applications while guaranteeing 72-hour delivery with doubled fees. The site has crashed numerous times since its launch.[17][18] Those outside Venezuela were solicited bribes usually many times of the cost of the passport.[19][20]

Due to these shortages, the Maduro government has since 1 November 2017 allowed Venezuelan passport holders to extend their passports by 2 years,[21] provided these passports have enough blank pages, although Venezuelan citizens with pending applications for new passports will end up having said applications cancelled if they exercised the former option.[22]

Since 2017, 10 countries in Latin America and Caribbean (Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Saint Lucia, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Chile, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Caribbean Netherlands) have stopped providing visa-free access to Venezuelans following the ongoing refugee crisis and reinstated visa requirements for those seeking to enter these countries. Some countries will still allow Venezuelans to enter visa-free if holding a valid visa/residence permit from a particular third country, such as Canada or the United States.