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12 tons of elephant tusks found as smuggling gangs busted
Online Edition
TWELVE tons of smuggled elephant tusks worth 600 million yuan (US$96.8 million) were found by Customs officers in Xiamen of southeast China’s Fujian Province in the biggest smuggling case China’s Customs has cracked in recent years.
Two smuggling gangs were busted and one of the bosses was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Customs officials announced yesterday.
The tusks were hidden among wooden boards and minerals.
The head of one of the smuggling gangs surnamed Chen contacted an overseas elephant tusk supplier to examine and buy the tusks. The gang smuggled 2,154 tusks totaling 7.68 tons worth 378 million yuan. Another gang headed by a suspect surnamed Liu smuggled 1,034 tusks amounting to 4.2 tons worth 225 million yuan.
In one case, Liu purchased 7 tons of tusks worth US$3 million together with a suspect surnamed Zhang starting in April of last year. They bought wooden boards and dug spaces one meter wide and two meters long in them to hide the tusks.
Liu transferred the wooden boards with the hidden tusks to Malaysia at first and smuggled them to China in an effort to reduce the risks of being caught. They rented a logistics warehouse to stock the tusks in Shishi in Fujian Province and sold them in batches.
Much of the smuggling occurred last year. Chen received a prison term of 15 years, though there was no further information on any other suspects.
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