Whistleblower Says Venezuela Issuing Passports to Terrorists

A Venezuelan whistleblower says the government is selling passports and visas to suspicious Middle Eastern citizens.  

The Venezuelan embassy official is named Misael López Soto.

He fled the embassy located in Baghdad in 2015, and later posted a YouTube video detailing how government officials requested he participate in a scheme to sell authentic documents to Mideast nationals.

"I have made public how, under the complacent eye of diplomats in the mission (in Baghdad), local employees delivered visas, passports, birth certificates, and other types of Venezuelan documentation to citizens of Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and, in some cases, Pakistan," he said in the video.

In a recent interview with CNN Espanol, he reiterated the point that a number of people buying government documents from the Venezuelan embassy in Baghdad were involved in terrorist activity. 

Lopez, who now lives in Toledo, Spain, specifically named Ambassador Jonathan Velsco of Venezuela as an official who gave him an envelope with a million dollars, passports, and visas and told him to "take care of this".

"He later explained to me that, in Iraq, people paid a lot of money for a visa or a passport. I thought it was a joke," he said. 

Lopez also recalled an incident where a coworker at the embassy attempted to sell Venezuelan visas to 13 Syrians for $10,000 apiece. 

"Her excuse was that they wanted to go to the World Cup in Brazil in 2014," he told CNN. "I suspected they were terrorists so I completely refused."

He added that in some cases the scheme was tied to terrorist groups like Hezbollah.  That group has had ongoing ties with the socialist regime in Caracas.

Venezuelan officials are denying the claims.