Sins of omission: incompetence or corruption

Consumers are understandably fuming and flabbergasted by revelations that the second-hand Japanese car they bought had its mileage tampered with.

Many were duped into believing they are buying a car with low mileage and thus clinching a bargain only to find out that the dashboard mileage is a far cry from reality.

The racket involving at least two car dealerships – Rokku Autodealer and Tal-Qasab Autosales – was first revealed by MaltaToday last Sunday. The report gave details of how the deceit is carried out and while the criminal behaviour of the dealerships is at the core of the problem, this is aided by lax controls at the port and at Transport Malta.

The police are investigating the case and this newspaper understands that more than 300 case files have been picked up from Transport Malta. The alleged behaviour of the dealers is tantamount to fraud and forgery of official documents at the very least.

But there is more to this story than just the deceit perpetrated by two rogue dealers. There are also sins of omission by public officials, which at best are the result of incompetence and at worst the result of corruption.

The racket starts the moment the cars reach Malta. A manual form for each imported vehicle is filled by port inspectors but the field in which the car mileage is listed is often left blank. The excuse dealers bring up is that the car battery has gone flat and the mileage cannot be read from the dashboard, which prompts the inspector to leave the field blank and move on to the next car.

The car mileage on the form is then filled in by the dealer at a later stage with no visual verification of the odometer by an inspector.

This lax attitude by port inspectors is wrong and even if it is simply done out of expediency it opens the door to abuse. This allows rogue dealers to do as they please.

A similar lax attitude is adopted at Transport Malta’s offices when dealers go to register the newly-imported cars. The physical documentation presented in these cases contains a false JEVIC certificate printed in Malta and the import form with the tampered mileage written down on it.

JEVIC is the Japanese company that inspects vehicles before they are dispatched abroad. The company logs all the car’s details, including the mileage, in a website that is publicly accessible.

However, at Transport Malta none of the officials receiving the paperwork from car dealers bothers to check the details on the physical documents with those listed on the JEVIC database. This simple action would weed out the rogue dealers.

Why aren’t the documents cross-checked with the JEVIC database? Are officials receiving the documents doing this of their own volition simply to cut corners and speed up the process? Or have they been given orders from their superiors to act this way? Is anybody within the authority on the take to close an eye?

These are serious questions that the police have to investigate. Catching the dealers and presenting the proof to nail them in court is the easy part because the material is all documented.

But more needs to be done to understand whether somebody at the transport regulator has been receiving bribes to ‘arrange’ things. And if the lax attitude is simply just that, heads must role just the same because complacency has fostered an environment conducive to widespread abuse.