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Japan to tighten control on stolen car exports

Tokyo July 17, 2005; Kyodo reported that Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has decided to strengthen measures to plug the pipeline of stolen vehicle exports beginning in fiscal 2006, ministry sources said Saturday.

The decision was made on the heels of an increasing number of car thefts for the purpose of reselling them overseas, the sources said.

The ministry will begin taking the measures, including checking all vehicle identification numbers, at ports serving as used car export centers, they said.

As the first step, the ministry will conduct test projects at several ports well-equipped with facilities to control the movement of people and cargo, such as Wakkanai in northern Hokkaido and Niigata on the Sea of Japan coast, in fiscal 2006, which begins next April.

The test projects, to be followed by permanent nationwide measures beginning in fiscal 2007, will be conducted with the help of such cargo-checking companies as the semipublic All Nippon Checkers Corp.

Specifically, checks will be made on such points as whether vehicle identification numbers have been falsified and whether cars are on the General Insurance Association of Japan's stolen vehicle list, the sources said. ADVERTISEMENT

Another key item to be checked will be whether vehicles have been deregistered in accordance with a rule introduced July 1, the sources said.

Checking officers will put a sticker on vehicles that come up clean. They will report to police or customs if they have any doubts, they said.

Security guards will confirm that a go-ahead sticker has been put on cars moved to shipping quays to prevent unchecked vehicles from being snuck in.

The ministry modeled the new projects after a successful case seen at Fushiki Toyama Port in Toyama Prefecture, where exporters and All Nippon Checkers have been pitching in to curb exports of stolen vehicles.

According to the National Police Agency, approximately 60,000 vehicles have been stolen in Japan annually since 2001.

It is unclear how many of them have been exported, but it is believed that a large portion of such thefts are linked to people who steal, export and sell cars abroad in a systematic manner.