According to Interpol the trade of stolen cars is in the third place in the world after the trade of drugs and weapons.
There is data of about 4 million cars that have been stolen in 61 countries in the database of Interpol, which can be used by 181 countries in the world, one of which is Armenia. First of all cars are intended for transportation, but according to the Armenian mentality, cars are simply luxurious and comfortable. This last time a new form of competition has appeared in Armenia: if someone imports a new modern car, the other people try to import a better one in order to have the best car, besides that they don’t forget to append the good numbers of their old car on the new one.
As a result of car import mark increase in Armenia, there is also an increase in the number of imports of stolen cars. There are a lot of cases when Armenians buy cars for business or private usage purposes then import them to Armenia, and later it turns out that these cars are stolen and are searched by Interpol. Due to the RA police efforts it turned out that there were 69 stolen cars among the 8683 cars that were imported to Armenia in 2004, even more, the identification numbers of 7 cars had been changed. These cars were stolen from the following countries: Russia (15), Azerbaijan (2), Georgia (2), Germany (7), Bulgaria (1), Italy (3), Japan (3), France (3) and Belgium (13), as for the other ones, these cars were stolen in different countries of Europe.
In 2005 the local police of Yerevan arrested three people from “ARMA” hotel with their cars of the following models: Mercedes E-500, Hammer, and Mercedes CL 55. Later it turned out that the first two cars had been stolen from the US and the third one – from Germany and were wanted by the Interpol. There have also been cases when Armenians bought stolen cars in the UAE and imported to Armenia from there. For instance, an Armenian went to the UAE and read in one of the newspapers that one of the shops sold an AUDI model car and later he bought it. After he imported this car to Armenia it turned out that this car was wanted by Interpol and was registered in one of the insurance companies in Lithuania (currently the general prosecutor’s office is trying to fix the problem out and return this car to the owner).
During the first nine months of 2005 the police of Armenia checked 9715 imported cars. As a result of this they found 48 stolen cars and 15 stolen cars with changed identification numbers, most of which had been stolen in Russia, the USA, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the UAE and were imported in Armenia through Georgia. In 2005 the RA court made five decisions regarding stolen cars, as a result of which they made a decision that the purchasers were not the ones to blame and their cars weren’t confiscated. And other two cases were stopped until the investigations were finished.