The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) office on Tuesday impounded two luxury vehicles fitted with fake number plates at the house of a Nairobi County Council official.
A Range Rover Overfinch and a Mercedes Benz s500 were found in the unnamed county official’s home fitted with number plates registered to motorbikes.
Upon closer scrutiny, the DCI officials also confiscated two other pairs of number plates hidden in the boot of the Benz .
“Two Vehicles, a Range Rover and Mercedes Benz, using Motorbike registration numbers (KBN 591A and KBG 330E) were recovered today from the premises of an official of the Nairobi City Council. Two other pairs of Number Plates (KCR 985U and KCR 196P) were found in the boot of the Mercedes,” DCI revealed.
Prior to May 2009, motorcycles used to be fitted with the 3-lettered number plate similar to motor vehicles.
The switch to the current 4-lettered plate for motorbikes was necessitated by the rapid rise in the number of motorbikes on the road.
This led to a rapid depletion of new number late series thus making the administration of motor vehicles difficult.
DCI’s latest bust comes just 3 days after two top brand vehicles registered as semi-trailers were nabbed.
Ms. Cynthia Wanjiru Gitonga and John Mwangi were declared as the registered owners of the fraudulently acquired vehicles.
Investigators have since established that the vehicles were declared as semitrailers in order to evade duty through an organized scheme that claimed they were manufactured at a fictitious company in Mombasa.
