Canada Is a New Hot Spot in a Global Wave of Auto Thefts

livemint.com:

TORONTO—When Metin Sozen’s Honda CR-V was stolen in Montreal in April, a police officer suggested he bid adieu to his car. “She told us our car is probably on its way to Africa," said Sozen, an illustrator who lives in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. Sozen’s car was one of the thousands that were stolen in Canada last year, many of which were loaded into shipping containers and smuggled from the Port of Montreal to distant ports in Africa and the Middle East.

Law-enforcement specialists say relatively light penalties and lax border security are combining with booming overseas demand to create an easy way for crime rings to exploit a lucrative market. Interpol has labeled Canada one of the world’s “main source countries" for stolen vehicles, feeding a global black market that law-enforcement officials say is funding international organized crime groups. “There’s been massive growth," said Samuel Heath, a spokesman for Interpol, the global law-enforcement agency, which has been keeping a database of stolen vehicles that now numbers more than 250,000.

Heath said the number vastly undercounts the actual total of stolen cars worldwide. Roughly 105,000 cars were stolen in Canada in 2022, a 27% increase from 2021 and the most in 13 years, according to government statistics. The increase is part of a global wave that began gathering force at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the U.S., almost one million cars were stolen in 2022, up 11% from 2021, according to the FBI. Other countries also recording increases in 2022, included France, which reported more than 130,000 reported vehicle thefts, and Germany, which reported more than 25,000 stolen cars. In Canada, where the rate of cars stolen per person is higher than in Europe, car theft