The Assistant Commissioner at the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) has risen strongly to the defence of the service over allegations that the service engages in fraudulent activities.

Ms Anne Anipa says she is yet to come across evidence of allegations that some CEPS officials connive with car-stealing syndicates to import and sell off stolen vehicles.

In an interview on Front Page on Joy FM on Friday, Ms Anipa said CEPS officials at the port have for long upheld high behavioral standards and have complied with rules but was quick to add that suggestions that some CEPS officials at the Tema Port engage in fraudulent deals cannot be entirely false.

This is because although there are very honest officials who ensure due process is followed at the port, there are some officers who would stop at nothing to break the rules.

Ms. Anne Anipa said while she could not cite a specific incident where a CEP official has connived with a car-stealing syndicate – alleged by former Confiscated Vehicle Committee chairman– to allocate vehicles she believes some officials will try to beat the system.

She said CEPS officials work in collaboration with Interpol to ensure that stolen vehicles are re-exported to their owners.

This exportation, however, is done after the service has received a written application from the owner of the vehicle.

Such vehicles are labeled abandoned only after three months when the owners do not make claims for their vehicles.

In the wide-ranging interview which bordered on the operations of CEPS and other agencies at the port, Ms Anipa told host Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, the service allocated vehicles only upon the advice of the Confiscated Vehicle Committee, whose chairman, Mr Carl Wilson, was dismissed by President Mills on Thursday.

The dismissal was announced minutes after several scores of National Democratic Congress (NDC) sympathizers massed up at the party’s national office and locked up offices there demanding Mr Wilson’s dismissal.

The committee was established through a provision in the 1992 constitution that:

“There shall be appointed by the Minister for the purpose of the disposal of forfeited vehicles a committee comprising three members, namely a representative from the Office of the Chief of Staff, a representative from the Ministry of Finance and a representative of the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service.”

Pressed to respond to why CEPS would not auction vehicles but would rather allocate them based on a committee’s recommendation, Ms Anipa said auctioning is only one of the various means to dispose of confiscated vehicles.

Story by Fiifi Koomson/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana