The manifest showed the consignor for the high-end vehicle is in Dubai, UAE, while the consignee is in Kampala, Uganda/KRA
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 5 – The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has seized 144 drums of imported ethanol at the Port of Mombasa, which had been declared as 1000 bags of cement.
According to the authority, customs officers also seized another high-end motor vehicle, a Range Rover Sport, suspected to have been stolen from the United Kingdom, on Thursday.
The manifest showed the consignor for the high-end vehicle is in Dubai, UAE, while the consignee is in Kampala, Uganda.
The car was declared as second-hand window frames, doors, folding chairs, stools and wall pictures.
The ethanol was imported in two twenty feet containers while the vehicle was in a twenty-foot container.
The two were intercepted following intelligence reports.
A multi-agency team lead by KRA undertook verification on the consignment and confirmed that the three containers were indeed carrying 28,800 litres of concealed ethanol and a Range Rover.
Drums with a capacity of 200 litters each were concealed with 285 boxes of spaghetti at the entrance of the containers to prevent the law enforcers from detecting the ethanol.
The mode of concealment is similar to that of four twenty-foot containers recently intercepted at the Inland Container Depot (ICD) in Nairobi, with a uniform item stacked in the first two columns and the rest of the container conveying cargo in drums.
The importation of ethanol is restricted with only licensed firms and dealers being allowed to import the product to reduce the manufacturing of illicit alcohol.
Ethanol attracts excise duty of Sh6 million per 20-foot container and had the smugglers succeeded, KRA could have lost at least Sh12 million in taxes.
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