Police officers in Kisumu have arrested 12 men suspected to be engaged in illegal siphoning of fuel on transit.
After a morning crackdown in Otonglo area in Kisumu Town on Monday, Regional Police Boss Willy Lugusa divulged that 317 litres of super petrol were netted at the first site, an underground tank discovered at the second site and 10,000 litres of kerosene were recovered in the third site.
“In all the three places, the kind of equipment we saw suggested that siphoning happens,” he revealed.
Lugusa said the crackdown was implemented after receiving tip offs from the public. He said undercover officers had been following up operations in the area; where a lot of truck movement in and out of nondescript iron sheet enclosures had been noted.
Lugusa, who was accompanied by officers from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), illustrated that evidence pointing to siphoning as huge capacity tanks and generators were present.
He dubbed such illegal activities as economic sabotage as people make attempts to evade some taxes.
Lugusa emphasised that the police will carry on further investigations to establish whether the fuel is from tankers with fuel for export that do not reach their intended destination and instead have the fuel dumped back into the country.