A syndicate dealing in top-of-the-range vehicles was busted trying to conceal three high-end Range Rovers at the port of Mombasa, by Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) officers on Wednesday.
The KRA officers identified the impounded vehicles as; a Range Rover Vogue SE, a Range Rover Sport, and a Range Rover Discovery.
KRA Commissioner of Customs and Border Control, Kevin Safari, revealed to Capital News that the vehicles were unearthed using the newly installed non-intrusive cargo scanner.
“During the cargo verification process, scanner images did not match with information in the importation documents,” he disclosed.
The state-of-the-art scanner was placed at the port to address issues such as concealments, illicit flows, and importation of counterfeits.
A report by the KRA officials indicated that the vehicles had been shipped from the United Kingdom (UK) in two 40-foot containers, with Uganda scheduled as the final destination.
“One of the containers was said to have a Vauxhall Insignia Elite, assorted household goods, and a Nissan Juke. However, upon verification, it was found to contain a Range Rover Sport and a Range Rover Vogue SE,” the official divulged.
On the other hand, the second containers’ manifest stated it contained a Toyota YARIS VVT-1 and household goods, only for the KRA officials to find Land Rover discovery HSE TD 6 concealed within.
Mr Aruchan Ivan and Mr Kibalama Bocan, both of the UK, were the names found on the shipping documents confiscated through the joint effort of KRA officials, Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), National Intelligence Service (NIS) Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), Interpol, and Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).
The Directorate of Criminal Investigation has since confirmed that three vehicles were stolen from INTERPOL's iMotor Vehicles database.
