54 People Accused In Selling Stolen Cars Are Prosecuted By Interpol

On March 8, Algiers Cheragua court will decide on the case of selling, purchasing, transportation, numbering and smuggling of cars of foreign origin, involving 39 people, including the head of an agency for the sale and purchase of cars in Cheragua, and 15 others are sued with misdemeanors of scam and selling vehicles that are not conform to law, while the charge of falsification and forgery in administrative papers was directed for the rest of the accused, including the Secretary-General and the head of the gray card office and the agent of Cheragua district and a member of the municipality of El Biar, and an assistant in the district of Bouzeria.

According to the trial, the circumstances of the case dated back to 2011, when the security services received a notification from INTERPOL that stolen cars from Germany were being traded in Algeria, and an investigation was opened in the case, then security services arrested the involved in the Mujahideen license to import Cars for the year 2012.

All the accused denied the act against them, and the employees of the departments of Cheragua, Bouzaria and El Biar municipality stated that they had nothing to do with the forgery, and that they were not experts to discover fraud in the files at the level of their administration.

With regard to those who are sued over the use of counterfeiter and the selling of stolen vehicles are from Oran, Tlemcen, Khamis al-Khashna, Tizi Ouzou and others, explaining that they were victims in the case of being just customers who bought and resold the cars, while the judge confronted one of the defendants, who comes from Oran, by selling his car to Malian national on the Malian border one month after its acquisition, which confirms that he joined the International cell for smuggling stolen cars from Europe, which exceeded the number of thirty luxury cars of the type “Golf” generation six and seven, Audi, Mercedes, BMW and Citroen Berlingo, as all of them deposited their basic files in the administrative department of Cheragua, and imported them from accredited marketing agencies in Algeria. 

Investigations showed that their customization at the Port of Algiers is legalized, and the names of 14 victims were used but wrong names of mothers and other fake identities, and 28 citizens were victims of the smuggling cell, and who bought stolen cars that were seized since 2012.

An elderly businessman in his seventies was brought before the court on charges of buying a smuggled car from Italy in 2012 in Oran, then found himself accused with a young man in the third decade of his life whose identity was used in a base file of a smuggled car, but he said he never bought or sold a car.

The General Attorney sought 5 years imprisonment and a fine of 5 times the value of the goods against 39 main defendants, with two years in jail and DZD 100.000 fines for another 15 involved.