British detectives tracing a Lexus stolen from London have ended up tracking it to Uganda – where it was found alongside a fleet of other stolen British cars worth more than £1m (Shs5.6billion), the Daily Mail reported.
The £50,000 (Shs280m) SUV was fitted with a state-of-the-art tracking device, which activated as soon as it was taken from outside a property in west London.
As a result the UK’s National Crime Agency was able to use a smartphone app to trace the journey of the stolen RX450h Kampala, where they were stunned to find it alongside 28 other luxury cars which had been stolen from the UK by the car-smuggling gang.
The stolen Lexus which led to the discovery of the smuggling ring was taken in April, and later tracked to Le Havre, in France, where it was shipped across the Mediterranean Sea and through the Suez Canal down to the Middle Eastern nation of Oman.
It was then shipped to Mombasa in Kenya before being transported by road to Kampala – in a steel container.
In a bid to take the car off the radar, it was taken to France, Oman and later to this Mombasa port from where it was later driven to Kampala.
The tracking app even allowed police to identify how corrupt officials in both Kenya and Uganda, infiltrate the criminal syndicate and understand its operation.
British National Crime Agency regional manager Paul Stanfield, who tracked the vehicle and uncovered the smuggling gang, told Daily Mail: “This investigation is an excellent example of the close co-operation between the UK National Crime Agency, National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service, Interpol and [anti-fraud investigators] APU to tackle the increasing threat from organised vehicle crime.”
“Working with the police and security services in Kenya and Uganda, we have been able to dismantle an international criminal network that has been responsible for stealing high-value cars from the UK and exporting them to East Africa,” he said.
This is not the first time that luxury cars stolen in Britain are traced in Uganda.