Sloppy mistake leads to OMR2000 fine for criminals
The four expats paid a fine of OMR2000 after the court of first instances in Ibra found them guilty of the crime, violating Article 7 of the Consumer Protection Law of 2014
MUSCAT: A sloppy mistake by a group of four expats led to them being caught red handed replacing the manufacturing date on expired car tyres, according to the Public Authority for Consumer Protection (PACP).
The expats had sold the tyres in January, 2019 but had faked the manufacture date for them so that it also read January, 2019, which the PACP called impossible.
“The tyres cannot have been manufactured, shipped, and supplied in the same month, especially since shipping these goods from the country where they were made would have taken between 30-35 days.
“Based on that, the proper procedures were taken against the four accused.”
The four expats paid a fine of OMR2000 after the court of first instances in Ibra found them guilty of the crime, violating Article 7 of the Consumer Protection Law of 2014, an offence that became even more serious as the company at which the expats worked was supplying car tyres to retailers.
In a statement PACP said : “Inspectors discovered expat workers at a tyre supplier who were fraudulently importing and then selling car tyres. The expats had changed the expiry dates on the tyres.
“The authority carried out an investigation and gathered all necessary evidence, after which a technical report was produced proving that all of the tyres gathered by the authority had been stamped with a manufacture date for the first week of 2019.
The tyres were first ordered in November 2018 and had been manufactured earlier, which proved that the accused were importing car tyres which were past their expiry dates.
“Bills for sale of the tyres also proved that they had gone to sale in the first ten days of January,” the statement added.
These bills, according to the PACP, showed that the ‘manufacture dates’ that the suspects had forged were for the same period when the suspects had actually sold the tyres.
The PACP followed proper procedure for the case and filed the report to the Public Prosecution, which led to a court ruling of an OMR2000 fine for the four accused, as well as the destruction of the fraudulent tyres.