The capital city has recently been plagued by rising crime, with revelation being that Hundreds of Kenyans could lose their vehicles after it emerged that employees of the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) are cloning number plates and fraudulently registering cars for sale.
Police also suspect that rogue dealers in Nairobi are selling cars with duplicate number plates to unsuspecting members of the public.
The plates are used illegally to mask a vehicle’s true identity and leaves the legitimate vehicle owner facing crimes that they never engaged in.
The ring, comprising officials attached to the Licensing, Information Technology, Inspection and the Registration of Motor Vehicles departments of the NTSA, has been helping criminals to duplicate number plates for stolen vehicles and those used for criminal activities.
Officers from the Flying Squad, the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), raided the NTSA offices in Upper Hill, Nairobi, to find out how the ring operates and eventually prosecute those involved in a crime that helped terrorists to stage the 14 Riverside Drive attack that led to the loss of 21 lives.
The Flying Squad had revealed that the number plate of the Toyota Ractis (KCN 340E) believed to have been used by the attackers was not a fake, but a duplicate of an existing one.
Also , a vicious motor vehicle logbook cartel is denying the taxman billions of shillings in customs revenue, causing panic among motor vehicle dealers and owners and bleeding financiers huge amounts of money in defaulted loans.
It makes parallel logbooks that are admissible in lending institutions; alters records in the government motor vehicle registration database and provides alternative number plates for smuggled cars.
The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) says besides the 124 cars it listed as having been registered illegally and evaded paying about Sh500 million taxes, more than 300 others exist.
The Audi, which was parked at the Kabete Police Station and was used as collateral for a Sh1 million loan from Meridian Acceptance Ltd, has been “baptised” thrice in the database — first as a lorry, then as a sport utility vehicle and again as a truck — all in under 60 days!
Trouble began when the borrower, a Congolese national, defaulted on the loan. The lender, who had duly conducted a search in the KRA system and found the ownership documents to be genuine, could not transfer the SUV because it had been “converted” into a lorry.
The first search showed the registration was for a black Audi Q7 station wagon manufactured in 2007, chassis number WAUZZZ4L6D027998 and registered to the Congolese with the number KBV 372R.
A second search, on April 19, brought up a completely different result: The details were for a white Leyland truck with chassis number MB1DTJCC0DRCH205.
How will the cartel be finished?