No smuggled Bugattis: Provider says LTO portal blocks suspicious car registration

The provider of the Land Transportation Management System on Wednesday clarified that the allegedly smuggled two Bugatti Chiron sports cars being probed by the Senate are not registered in its system.

The joint venture of German technology firm Dermalog and its local partners Holy Family Printing Corp., Microgenesis, and Verzontal Builders Inc. said the LTMS has put in place security features that would prevent the registration of suspicious vehicle units.

Last week, Senator Raffy Tulfo claimed that a blue Bugatti, with the license plate number NIM 5448, was allegedly registered under the name of Thu Trang Nguyen. A red one with plate number NIM5450, he said, was registered under Meng Jun Zhu. Both of these luxury cars are believed to cost around $3 million each.

“The Bugatti Chiron would not have been able to be registered in LTMS as the robust security features of LTMS would have prevented such registration from occurring,” the Dermalog JV indicated in its milestone report on Wednesday.

“Dermalog vowed that the company will continue to uphold its commitment to excellence by providing state-of-the-art biometric and identification systems worldwide,” it added.

Based on the Dermalog consortium’s report, the LTMS has facilitated the issuance of about 28 million driver's licenses in 2023, which was equivalent to 30,000 license issuances daily. It also noted that it efficiently registered around 70,000 to 80,000 motor vehicles daily last year.

Dermalog JV estimated that if the 28 million driver’s licenses were not issued in LTMS, P1.932 billion in computer fees would have been charged to the driving public.

For the motor vehicle registrations a day in LTMS, the motoring public has also saved between P3.123 billion to P3.245 billion every year in computer fees.

The LTMS is a one-stop shop that integrates all Land Transportation Office services in a single contactless database system and digital platform. The project went through a competitive bidding process in May 2018.

Among others, the LTMS offers a complete service offering in motor vehicle transactions—from buying a new motor vehicle and renewing your motor vehicle registration to performing a miscellaneous transaction.