Luxury and exclusive company cars, invisible to the public: Regitra “depersonalizes” them

The open data platform Okredo (formerly Abalt) found at least 2,894 “secret” cars in the vehicle registration data published by Regitra, which have been registered by companies affected by COVID-19 in Lithuania since the beginning of last year.

All these cars have the same brand: “depersonalized.”

The largest displacement – even 8,275 liters – has a car registered in the small community “Quick Garden”, the indicated power – 372 kilowatts. However, it is not new. registered for the first time.

But the list is full of powerful new cars.

For example, UAB’s “Western Lithuania Industry and Finance Corporation”, headed by Antanas Bosas, had a volume of 5.95 liters in 2020 last October. the driver of a car registered for the first time. This company has received more than 18 thousand. Euro grants during and after staff downtime.

UAB Globalita, which has allocated 195 thousand LTL to Sodra. debt in euros, having received almost 400 thousand. Subsidies in euros during and after downtime, registered a new 4.4-liter car in April this year.

The new and powerful car has also been registered by other companies, such as Iceco Assets, Vaidsta, RTA Group or others, but it is not possible to know which one. And, in general, “depersonalized” cars are sets. They have been registered by companies such as “Montuotojas”, “Kautra”, “Nematekas”, “Mantinga” and others.

It turns out that if there is only one Bentley in the township, your buying company may enjoy additional privacy; this will not be seen in public data. Regitra bases this decision on the protection of personal data.

“Vehicles operated by legal entities (owners) are depersonalized according to the uniqueness of the registry. In other words, if the make, trade name, category / class and municipality of registration of a vehicle are unique in relation to all registered objects, then they are considered as unique objects that, due to their uniqueness, can be properly associated with specific natural person ”, explains Regitra.“.

However, this is challenged by car dealers, who notice cases where even non-exclusive series-produced cars are “depersonalized.”

Earlier, the chairman of the Seimas Budget and Finance Committee, Mykolas Majauskas, announced that 148 companies had used state aid, but that at the same time they had bought luxury cars. So far, the names of specific companies have not been made public.

I think it’s a mistake

The largest number of “depersonalized” cars, up to 25, is registered by the small company “Adele kompanija”, which is engaged in the retail trade of spare parts and accessories for motor vehicles. Representatives of the company do not even understand what these cars could look like.

“If I understand correctly, I look at the documents before registration, and if there are documents from the Netherlands or from other parties, what is indicated in the documents is registered by Regitra. If the full trademark is not indicated, in fact it does not register it,” he said. the telephone representative of the company.

He assures that these will not be exclusive cars, but that they can be series.

“All those cars go abroad. Only Regitra trusts what she sees in the documents of the country where the car was brought from,” guessed the man.

He suggested not relying on other data provided by Regitra, such as engine volume, horsepower, etc.

“If you write a Volkswagen with stripes on the documents, it will register a Volkswagen with a dash, without a model. It rewrites everything identically. In most documents the volume is not indicated, kilowatts, it also remains in the technical passport, It is half empty ”, considered the man.

Imantas Mekas, the director of the Molėtai Technical Museum, mentions another reason: the museum collects vintage cars, there are 14 “depersonalized” cars here.

“Something has happened recently with the owner declaration codes (SDK), it was probably not made public because of it. We have about 130 cars registered, plus another 50, for which we memorize SDK codes; they were declared on our behalf, but did not register. Trying to load SDK codes into the system requires loading contracts. These are the cars where the SDK crashes, they appear unnamed. We may have left 5-10 cars unnamed. It’s a bit strange, but it’s not something important to us, “I. Mekas shrugged.

It is even more outrageous that the company has not been able to obtain SDK codes for at least 10 vehicles for more than a month and a half: “It is not explained to us, Regitra also does not know why it did not give, no I can not do anything.”

Laurynas Boguševičius, the head of Deals on Wheels, found in the list of “depersonalized” cars electric cars previously sold by the company that are not special, he considered, perhaps “Regitra” depersonalizes those cars with nominal numbers or starting with the letters EV . He also noted that at that time the company’s extremely exclusive car brand was advertised, although it was the only car in the Baltic countries.

Several other car dealers interviewed by Delfi did not understand how the car could be left without a brand.

“A new SDK code has appeared, maybe that’s why you can’t see it. I’ve seen that when you enter a brand in the system, trying to get an SDK code, in the end you don’t even see what the car is from. In others you can see. Something is wrong with the Regitra system. But there is no way to register a car without a brand, “said a representative of the company” Iconer “.

Iconer has registered a “depersonalized” car with a volume of 3.9 liters and a power of 530 kW.

“It is very difficult now to say how this car could have been. Maybe which Mercedes, maybe Bentley, is hard to tell from the volume, “said the man.

The small association Šotas, which is engaged in the activity of providing restaurants and prepared meals, has bought a car with a displacement of 4.4 liters, power – 340 kW, model year – 2019. The leader of the small community refused to reveal what the car looked like.

Regitra says it protects personal data

Regitra, which is responsible for the registration of road vehicles, stores extremely large amounts of data in its registry.

“They are shared with other interested state institutions so that they can perform the functions assigned to them, and in compliance with the protection of personal data, a considerable amount of information is open and accessible to the public.

“One of the ideas of open data is to allow companies to use open data and thus create added value for society and the economy. Companies can analyze, draw conclusions and make useful decisions based on real facts. These data are also used for scientific purposes. It also ensures the public interest and greater transparency, “said the commentator.

However, when asked why some company cars remain “depersonalized”, Regitra explains with regard to the protection of personal data: “The purpose of opening data is to prevent the possible disclosure of personal data.”

Open data is processed and published in accordance with the Public Sector Data Opening Guidelines approved by the Minister of Economy and Innovation, and the main condition for the publication of open data, according to Regitra, is that the data must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU. personal data, including the obligation to guarantee the confidentiality of personal data.

“When preparing and publishing such open data, we must ensure that this data cannot be linked to a specific person, ie the published data may not contain personal data. Therefore, in order to avoid violations of personal data and after consulting the State Data Protection Inspectorate, we have made the decision to depersonalize not only vehicles owned by natural persons (owners), but also legal persons (owners) when they are exclusive and / or unique, because many times the natural person (representative of the legal entity) is registered as the owner of the vehicle ”, explains the registrar.

The company is committed to making efforts to minimize risks and prevent the possible disclosure of personal data.

The data is depersonalized according to an established algorithm, which includes not only passengers but also trucks.

There could be 60 anonymous Bentley cars of one make in Lithuania, as many as separate municipalities.

“Although several of the same cars can be registered throughout Lithuania, if it is unique in a municipality, it is considered exceptional,” confirmed Regitra.

You will not be able to “depersonalize yourself”

According to Regitra, companies could not choose for themselves whether a car can be depersonalized.

“The depersonalization of cars at the request of the owner is not possible. (…) The same data depersonalization algorithm applies to all vehicles, regardless of, for example, the category of the vehicle, the power, the amount of the purchase, the type of license plates issued, etc. », – assures Regitra.

However, you acknowledge that there may be errors in the public data.

“The preparation and publication of open data is an automatic process based on the data from the Registry of Road Vehicles, so in the presence of errors in the registry, there may be a possibility of inaccuracies in the open data. If discrepancies are detected, immediate measures are taken to correct them ”, explains the company.

Regitra also ensures that vehicle registration data is taken from identified sources and not from contracts.

“When vehicles are registered, their technical data, such as brand, trade name, etc., will be entered into the registry on the basis of their origin or approval documents. For example: registration certificate, manufacturer’s certificate (CoC). We observe that the sales contract is only a proof of the transaction, based on which a change of ownership is recorded in the Vehicle Owners Accounting System ”, explained Regitra.