Eighteen people were arrested in Eastleigh, Nairobi County in a major crackdown by Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) sleuths over dumping of goods in the country.

The suspects are linked to a ‘well-deliberated’ complex tax evasion scheme of ‘cargo dumping’ aimed at evading taxes.

KRA investigators, assisted by officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI), arrested the suspects following a three-day operation.

The arrest follows KRA’s unearthing of a well-orchestrated tax evasion scheme in which inland goods are misdeclared as transit goods with the intent to divert and dump the goods locally without payment of the requisite taxes.

Investigations on the scheme revealed that truck drivers alter vehicle registration plates mid-journey within the country and tamper with the electronic seals that enable real-time monitoring of trucks transporting transit goods through the Regional Electronic Cargo Tracking System (RECTS) used by KRA’s Customs and Border Control.

The trucks on transit are ‘armed’ with electronic seals which trigger an alarm at the KRA’s Central Command and Control if there’s tampering, diversion from the designated route, or an unusually long stopover.

They are supposed to be removed (‘disarmed’) at the borders as the transit goods exit the country.

The culprits in this scheme distort the truck’s identity to conceal the diversion of the goods and stay off the monitoring teams at the KRA’s Central Command and Control and Rapid Response Units (RRU) radar.

In this case, a 40-foot container full with textiles loaded in Mombasa and declared as transit goods destined to Democratic Republic of Congo for a consignee named Kandama Kasongo Franchoise were diverted and offloaded in Eastleigh, Nairobi under the watch of DCI’s elite Operation Support Unit (OSU) and KRA’s Investigation and Enforcement officers.

During the intelligence-led covert operation, investigators watched as the truck driver, who is among the 18 suspects arrested, change the truck’s registration at the Machakos Junction and tampered with the Customs electronic seal before proceeding with the journey towards Nairobi.

They were also seen erasing the “transit goods” marks on the trailer before making a U-turn in Mai Mahiu.

The enforcement teams had been trailing the truck from Mombasa for days and nights while waiting to strike at the right moment.

This happened on Tuesday morning as the goods, worth Sh3,528,471.42 in taxes were being offloaded on Monday at around 10.30 pm in Eastleigh. Investigations further reveal that the consignee (Kandama Kasongo Franchoise) has over time imported and dumped a total of nine consignments with a tax implication of Sh21,956,664.81.

The truck driver and others found offloading the goods in Eastleigh were arrested.