Last year, just over 3,800 foreign driver’s licenses were submitted to the Estonian Transport Administration for exchange, almost 50 of which were fake, while the number of fakes has tripled compared to previous years.
“In the case of a few hundred permits, the customer service representative had doubts about the authenticity of the submitted driver’s license. Fortunately, most of the suspicions were not confirmed, but forgery was detected in 44 driver’s licenses,” Tiit Poll, driving rights service manager at the driving license department of the Transport Administration, sad.
Altogether 34 fake driver’s licenses were discovered in northern Estonia, one in East-Viru County and nine in southeastern Estonia.
Among the forgeries of 2023, there is a rising trend of fictitious driver’s licenses, or so-called pseudo driver’s licenses, which have not been issued by the authorities of any existing country. These are mostly ordered online. The top three include Pakistani driving licenses, pseudo driving licenses and Ukrainian driving licenses.
While last year 3,814 driver’s licenses were submitted for exchange and there were 44 fakes, 3,578 licenses were submitted in 2022 and 3,344 in 2021, while 13 fakes were detected in both years.
The Transport Administration comes into contact with foreign driver’s licenses when exchanging driver’s licenses of foreigners who have settled in Estonia and people who have returned to Estonia. The Transport Administration closely cooperates with the document experts of the Police and Border Guard Board both by checking documents on a daily basis and training officials annually.
Source: BNS
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