Adding to comment #9, I tried to look at the content of "base-passwd" and here's what I found:
$ dpkg-deb -W ./base-passwd_3.5.44_amd64.deb
dpkg-deb: error: archive './base-passwd_3.5.44_amd64.deb' has premature member 'control.tar.xz' before 'control.tar.gz', giving up
Adding to comment #9, I tried to look at the content of "base-passwd" and here's what I found:
$ dpkg-deb -W ./base- passwd_ 3.5.44_ amd64.deb passwd_ 3.5.44_ amd64.deb' has premature member 'control.tar.xz' before 'control.tar.gz', giving up
dpkg-deb: error: archive './base-
This might be the root cause of the problem.