Details have emerged of how National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) officials conspire with criminals to clone car number plates.
According to detectives, brokers within NTSA act as links between criminal gangs and employees of the motor vehicle registry.
“If someone in Nairobi wants a cloned number plate, the registrar will find a vehicle whose owner is located far from the city. He will also ensure that the number plate of the car is not on police radar,” an investigator told Daily Nation.
The vehicle specifications are then extracted from the owner’s logbook on the NTSA website.
A copy of the owner’s ID is also downloaded from the website.
“The details are then handed to the person who made the request. They then make a fake logbook elsewhere, go to a police station to get an abstract for a damaged or lost number plate and then go back to NTSA to apply for the number plate," the investigator added.
The inspection department then issues a certificate for the vehicle without conducting an inspection.
In the past three weeks, police have impounded 26 vehicles with duplicate number plates.
On Wednesday, police arrested 19 NTSA officials in a bid to smash the cloning ring.
The compromised employeesa are attached to Licensing, Information Technology, Inspection and Registration of Motor Vehicles departments of NTSA.
