“Customer attendants had suspicions about the genuineness of a couple hundred licences. Luckily, most of the suspicions were not confirmed, but 44 driving licences were proven to be fake,” said Tiit Poll, Driving Rights Service Manager at the Driving Licence Department of the Estonian Transport Administration.
Thirty-four fake driving licences were discovered in Northern Estonia, one in the Ida-Viru County and nine in South-Eastern Estonia.
An emerging trend in 2023 is the so-called pseudo-licences, which have not been issued by the authorities of any country. Most of these have been purchased online. The top three fakes are Pakistani driving licences, pseudo-licences and Ukrainian driving licences.
Last year, 3,814 driving licences including 44 fakes were received for renewal. Thirteen fake licences were discovered in 2022 and 2021 each, out of 3,578 and 3,344 renewal applications, respectively.
The Estonian Transport Administration handles foreign driving licences when renewing the licences of foreigners residing in Estonia and Estonian citizens returning from abroad. The Estonian Transport Administration works closely with the document experts at the Police and Border Guard Board in daily document checks and annual training for officials.
