How conmen forge genuine car details: A crime syndicate has been using forged car registration documents on cars belonging to genuine owners to apply and access for loans from banks or micro-financial institutions who offer log-book based loans.
This was been revealed by Kenya’s Business newspaper, the Business Daily, which is owned by the Nation Media Group (NMG).
Read: Vehicle registration, transfer now to take 10 minutes
According to an investigative report by the paper, the fake car registrations were first brought to the open during last month’s crackdown by KRA on illegal vehicle importations in Nairobi. Apparently, 5 of the vehicles that were impounded by KRA were registered to local commercial banks. “Most of the cars whose owners insisted they had paid all the taxes and had loans with banks had been fraudulently used to secure these loans,” said the report.
The report noted that some of the banks which had offered loans secured with cars that had questionable documentation include Family Bank, Equity Bank, Sidian Bank and the fallen Imperial Bank. “Motor dealers Tripple One Motors and Japan Africa marketing Company were also in the list of tax defaulters,” the report further added. Apparently, said the paper, one of the affected local mainstream banks recently found out that the original registration details of a Sh. 13 million loan secured by a Range Rover were actually those of a Toyota Probox.
According to the report, another affected log-book based lender is Meridian Acceptances. Its managing director James Ndwiga told the report that they are currently unable to auction a Q7 because its registration details at NTSA indicate that it is a lorry. “We don’t understand what happens when the first search indicates that the vehicle is fine only to find out after default that the details belonged to some other vehicle.”
In 2011 and 2012, KRA revealed that it had lost up to 1,000 logbooks in two batches with serial numbers ranging from S172501 to S173000, and S363501 to S364000.
According to the national car registration body, NTSA, although computerized measures have been put in place to assist banks in conducting quick online motor vehicle searches and verifications, those behind the syndicate have been ensuring that the loans are advanced before the bank gets the full details from NTSA. “We write to banks but unfortunately, sometimes the person coming for the verification letter is also part of the syndicate which means the letter never gets to the bank before the loan has been advanced,” Jacqueline Githinji, the head of registration at NTSA told the paper.
Currently, local banks take up to 7,000 of the 9,000 vehicle transfer requests that the NTSA handles every month. The NTSA has also established a special desk that handles the logbooks and from where the banks collect the documents every Wednesday and Friday.