Tons of smuggled pangolin and tortoise shells seized in Vietnam

Aug 25, 2009, 7:02 GMT

   Hanoi - Vietnamese customs inspectors have seized some 10 tons of pangolin and tortoise shells smuggled from Indonesia, an official said Tuesday.

   'The pangolin and tortoise shells are hidden in packages covered by seaweed in two shipping containers,' said Mai The Huyen, director of the customs department in the port of Haiphong. 'Our staff are opening the containers to check the exact weight.'

   Officials decided to open the containers Monday when they discovered they were owned by the same company as a container, opened Saturday, containing two tons of smuggled elephant tusks. The tusks were hidden amongst thousands of snail shells from Kenya.

   Customs officials said the waybills of the two containers described the contents as dried salmon stomach and seaweed. In fact they contained 51 packages of tortoise shells and 393 packages of pangolin shells, each weighing over 60 kilograms.

   Huyen said the total weight might come to over 10 tons.

   It was not known whether tortoise and pangolin shells were to be sold in Vietnam or were destined for other countries.

   Several cases of smuggled elephant tusks have been reported in Vietnam this year.

   Huyen said his department has discovered more than 8 tons of smuggled elephant tusks in the port so far this year. That included a case on March when authorities found over 6 tons of elephant tusks in a container shipped from Tanzania.

   On Thursday, police in the central province of Thanh Hoa seized nearly 100 kilograms of elephant tusks hidden in the boot and chassis of a car headed for Hanoi.

   According to Dao Thi Ngoc Van, a trafficking expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Hanoi, most elephant ivory smuggled into Vietnam is ultimately destined for China.