• Around a million illegal vehicles roam French roads, threatening public safety
• Registration fraud has allowed tax evasion and exploitation of the system by ghost companies

A recent report by the French Court of Auditors revealed that nearly one million vehicles are being driven illegally on French roads, in a scandal involving vehicle registration that has cost the government hundreds of millions of euros in lost taxes and fines.

The report warned that this fraud poses a serious public safety risk, as some fake dealerships manipulate records at the state vehicle registration agency (SIV), allowing unsafe cars and trucks on the roads.

The scheme has also become a source of organized crime.

According to the auditors, loopholes in the system have enabled various types of criminal activity to exploit the registry for illegal gains.

The fraud dates back to 2017, when the French government partially privatized the vehicle registration system to speed up the notoriously slow issuance of registration documents. Around 2,000 civil servants were reassigned, and car dealerships were given direct access to the registry to issue documents for their clients.

However, the report noted that the new system relied excessively on good faith, which was quickly abused by hundreds of unscrupulous operators who set up ghost dealerships and manipulated records for a fee.

The auditors estimate that about one million vehicles were registered through roughly 300 “phantom companies operating without government oversight.” Documents appear legitimate to police, but the cars and their owners become untraceable.

Between 2022 and 2024 alone, the fraud caused financial losses of approximately €550 million due to uncollected registration fees and fines for speeding and illegal parking.

The report identified 30 types of fraud, including avoiding environmental taxes on polluting vehicles, falsifying roadworthiness test results, and hiding the identity of previous owners.

Some fraudsters, known as “SIV-eurs,” reportedly helped luxury car importers evade tens of thousands of euros in import duties and environmental taxes by registering Rolls-Royces and Mercedes vehicles as specially adapted for people with disabilities, making them exempt from fees.

Stolen vehicles can also be re-registered through these fraudsters to avoid detection, while drug gangs use fraudulently registered cars for high-speed deliveries on highways.

Another press report noted a sharp 160% increase in extreme speeding violations between 2016 and 2022. Upon checking the registration records, many were found to be falsified.

The Court of Auditors criticized the state for failing to properly vet more than 30,000 dealers with access to the SIV, as all it took was creating a shell company and submitting a request, which was usually approved.

France’s Interior Ministry acknowledged the problem and said steps are being taken to address it. A plan announced last year has increased detection of fraud and significantly reduced the number of authorizations to access SIV records.