Six suspects held following tip-off:

STF busts multi-million rupee vehicle racket

by Jayampathy JAYASINGHE

The Police Special Task Force (STF) has busted a multi-million rupee racket involving the illegal assembly of vehicles at a garage at Pannipitiya, Kottawa last week, a senior police officer told the Sunday Observer.

A team of STF officers from the Special Weapons and Tactics Team swooped on an illegal vehicle assembly plant at Makumbura, Kottawa and took in for questioning six suspects following a tip-off by the STF Intelligence wing.

It was revealed that a millionaire businessman in Colombo was involved in the racket where luxury vehicles were imported in parts under the guise of spare parts depriving the state of import duty.

The businessman had allegedly earned millions of rupees during the past 16 years by paying only the import duty for motor vehicle spare parts. “It was a systematic, well organised racket by the businessman,” a senior police officer said.

The businessman’s modus operandi was to buy state vehicles at government auctions and remove the engine and chassis numbers and fix them to the newly assembled vehicles at the Kottawa garage.

When STF officers raided the assembly plant several newly assembled luxury vehicles such as a red Nissan cab, blue jeep, Toyota car worth over Rs 5.5 million, six jeeps, Nissan Sunny car, Mazda mini lorry, Pajero jeep, Honda motor-cycle, six engines and motor spares to assemble 19 more vehicles, oxygen tanks for welding purposes and polishing equipment were also found at the plant.

The STF Commandos handed over the assembled vehicles to the Homagama police for further investigations.