Growing official concern over the use of Hong Kong passports by people-smuggling syndicates has prompted a warning by an immigration consultant that the problem is bigger than the authorities admit.
Last week, the Immigration Department confirmed that in recent months, as many as 70 Hong Kong passports that had been reported lost in the city had been passed on to snakeheads - gangsters who run international people-smuggling rings.
But Tsim Sha Tsui immigration consultant Richard Aziz Butt claims this is the tip of the iceberg. He says he has been approached several times by snakeheads offering him a deal using middlemen. Because of the nature of his work, scores of passports pass through Butt's office.
One snakehead contacted him through a client saying he wanted Hong Kong or British National (Overseas) passports, which provide visa access to Canada or European countries. Butt met him in a restaurant and was told the plan.
'It was simple. They wanted to buy passports from people. A middleman would be used to arrange the deal and get the passport from seller to buyer,' Butt explained.
'Later they would tell the passport holder when they could report the passport stolen or lost - this was when the person they had sold it to had used it. It normally took only a matter of days from when they sold the passport to when it was reported lost or stolen.