The BBC reports on fraud in the German car scrap

According to police, the owners had already received the government subsidy under the scrappage scheme, but instead of being destroyed the cars ended up in the hands of criminal gangs who sold them on.

This is not an isolated case and police say a number of factors are to blame.

Thanks to the global downturn the scrap metal market has crashed, so many scrapyard dealers are sitting on a mountain of old cars they need to get rid of.

There are lax controls and criminal gangs are becoming more savvy.

The government now estimates around 10 percent of the plan, as many as 50,000 cars, have been diverted by criminals. It seems that it would not be terribly hard to track the scrapped automobiles but apparently no one noticed until a Hamburg port cargo check revealed 40 old cars headed to Africa.