The Chamber of Automobile Dealership Ghana (CADEG) has urged the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) to immediately suspend the order to seize some 95 luxury vehicles.
Their call comes on the back of EOCO’s press statement issued on Tuesday, April 18 announcing that it has frozen some 95 luxurious cars alleged to have been stolen from the US and Canada.
EOCO has since warned individuals in possession of such vehicles to surrender them, heightening hints of a crackdown on illicit activities in the automobile industry.
But according to CADEG, claims that the said vehicles were stolen are untrue, and added that EOCO should halt its order of suspension for fair investigations.
CADEG also said that EOCO did not consult them when they froze the cars alleged to have been stolen and said that the anti-graft body should have consulted some stakeholders to enable it to conduct a thorough investigation.
“Per the investigations, it means that EOCO should have contacted us to get our version and see that most of those cars that have been claimed to have been stolen are not actually stolen but Ghanaians are rather victims of these international forces.
“It is a cartel work from Canada that they are using that cartel system to take advantage of the ordinary businessman to take their money from them. So I believe that that exercise should be suspended.”
EOCOs statement further requested the dealers in possession of the listed vehicles to provide the necessary documents covering the vehicles before May 3 or risk a total confiscation of the vehicles in accordance with the law.
“There were a lot of people that were consulted, but CADEG in particular was not consulted. But as I told you, even if you are not consulted, we have engaged other stakeholders like Interpol, Auto Theft, the Legal Department of CID, the Director General of CID, Customs, and Shippers Authority so there’s communication going on between us, and how to sanitize the system.