The Motril Port police recovered two stolen vehicles during a routine check prior to boarding. The cars had been stolen in France and Italy.

Two people were arrested, both French nationals, and charged with being in possession of stolen goods and official-document forgery.

One of the cars was a Range Rover Sport with Italian licence plates, valued at 75,000 euros and the other was a Renault Megane with French plates.

The first car was rumbled on Saturday the 18th at 11.00am during the loading process of the car ferry, Volcán de Tirajana, sailing for Alhucemas, Morocco.

Checking the Range Rover’s papers against a European list of stolen vehicles, records showed that the car had been reported stolen in Italy, so they arrested the 46-year-old Frenchman driving it.

The next arrest was made the following day at 18.45h, during the same kind of routine check, but this time during the embarkation process for Volcán de Tinama sailing to the Spanish, North African enclave of Melilla.

On close inspection of the chassis number it was clear that it had been tampered with. Checking other identification references in the car, the Guardia Civil were able to discover the original chassis number and thus found that it had been reported stolen in France.

In this second case the car paperwork were not in the driver’s name, as he only had a letter ‘authorising’ him to drive it. That didn’t stop him getting arrested and charged with being in possession of stolen goods.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)