Stolen in London and smuggled to Africa - tracking the car thieves

As Stanfield dug deeper, he discovered that stolen UK cars had been recovered by the Ugandan authorities in the past but were still sitting in secure compounds. He found myriad reasons for this including communication difficulties between organisations across different continents, stretched police resources and insurers reluctant to go to the expense of recovering the cars to the UK.

Stanfield was determined to take action: “If new cars are being stolen shortly after they’ve been sold, that’s undermining the market because customers won’t buy them and insurers won’t cover them.”

The NCA decided to mount a sting operation when the next UK-registered stolen car turned up in Africa. When Stanfield found out about APU’s tracker-equipped Lexus, which had reached port in Mombasa, Kenya, he decided it was a perfect opportunity to track the movements of the criminals.

“We had to get permission from APU because the company’s priority is to recover the car,” he says. “The good thing is that Neil Thomas is a former police officer and understood our situation.”

The shipping container, now under covert surveillance by local police, was taken off the boat at Mombasa in Kenya and travelled west across the country on a low-sided truck. Thanks to the car’s tracking device, the police were able to remain at arm’s length and avoid arousing suspicion.

“We identified corruption involving port officials,” says Stanfield. “The vehicle went from Kenya into Uganda, where we saw more corruption at the border.”

The crooks took advantage of discrepancies in customs checks between different nations to smuggle the cars through.

“To take a car into Kenya, it must be examined in the UK to make sure it is roadworthy and not stolen, which, of course, didn’t happen,” says Stanfield. “When you go to Uganda, the onus is on the individual to register it and do the necessary checks, but criminals don’t.”

Instead, to get it into Kenya, the container’s contents were listed as random items. According to its manifest, it should have contained a cement mixer, sacks of used shoes and restaurant tables. Entering Uganda, however, the contents 
were declared as cars, so that 
the documentation appeared 
to be legitimate.

The cars were transported to the Ugandan capital of Kampala and from there to a bonded warehouse, where imported goods are stored until their owners collect them 
and pay the duty.Stanfield’s team waited to see 
who would come to collect the cars, but hopes of catching the criminal ringleaders were in vain.

“The customer buying the car would be instructed to come to the warehouse and would be responsible for paying any duty,” says Stanfield. “So the criminals involved didn’t have to turn up at the scene.”

Stanfield decided to swoop on the bonded warehouse to preserve the evidence and ensure APU’s Lexus didn’t disappear into the hands of an expectant Ugandan owner.

“There were three more stolen cars from the UK in the container with the Lexus, and others in the warehouse,” he says. “We investigated other bonded warehouses and in total found 34 high-value cars that had been stolen from the UK.”

Stanfield hopes that seizing and repatriating the cars will scare off anyone interested in buying a black market car.

“People who had been stopped in stolen cars all argued they had bought them in good faith,” he says. “We doubt that was the case, but trying to prove it is another matter.

“I told the Ugandan chief of police it was absolutely essential that we repatriate these cars to the UK to take the incentive out of the market, and he agreed. If people think they can get away by saying they bought the car in good faith, they will continue to do it. Whereas if you take a car off someone who has just paid $70,000, that is a lot of money to lose.

“All the indications are that, owing to our joint actions, the bottom of the stolen car market is dropping out. The local police say there has been a real reduction in the number of UK cars turning up in Uganda.”

A key factor in the success of Stanfield’s operation was that APU’s tracking device continued to transmit its position throughout the car’s long journey.