Sunyani, Sept. 7, GNA - The Brong-Ahafo Regional Command of Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) has impounded 17 unregistered vehicles smuggled into the region. Assistant Commissioner Samuel Tettey-Quarshie, the sector commander, told the GNA in an interview on Tuesday that investigations showed that the chassis numbers of most of the vehicles had been tampered with whilst others were on temporal importation. He said the command had processed relevant documents that had been forwarded to the appropriate authorities for the vehicles to be auctioned.

Mr Tettey-Quarshie expressed concern about activities of unauthorized vehicle syndicates in the region and appealed to the public to help apprehend such economic saboteurs. He appealed to potential vehicle buyers in the region to ascertain the validity and authenticity of vehicles from the Service before they bought them.

Mr Tettey-Quarshie said the service was not happy seizing vehicles belonging to innocent people and added that the country lost huge sums of money in revenue every year because of the activities of vehicle smugglers.

He said the command was on an exercise to seize smuggled vehicles and expressed regret that some people attacked personnel of the service during the exercise. He said recently unidentified people at a Sunyani garage assaulted some CEPS personnel during the routine exercise.