Vietnam seizes 1 ton of elephant tusks smuggled from Nigeria

Vietnam’s customs officers in the northern port city of Hai Phong have discovered about 1 ton of African elephant tusks stashed among bags of peanuts in a container sent in from Nigeria.

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The discovery was made on Sunday when the officers inspected the container # MRKU 8769844, which was one of four 20’’containers that were shipped from the West African country to the port on August 14, the port authority reported. 

According to the shipping documents, these containers contained peanuts, but after scanning them, customs officers found many objects looking like elephants tusks hidden in a corner of one of them.

Economic and environmental police officers also took part in the inspection.

After opening the suspected container, inspectors found 30 bags of elephant ivory, some being the entire tusks while others ivory segments.

The total weight of the tusks is about 1 ton, inspectors said.

This container also contained many bags of peanuts but the grain got moldy and produced a stinking odor.

The decayed peanuts will be destroyed as they were not qualified for use as feed, the local Plant Quarantine Sub-Department said. 

Many similar ivory smuggling cases have been cracked in recent years in Vietnam, which has banned trade in ivory since 1992 to prevent the hunting of the country’s dwindling population of elephants, which poachers value highly for their tusks.

One of the most recently cases occurred on June 22, 2014 when customs officers at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City discovered 39 African elephant tusks and about 100 ivory handicrafts worth over US$188,000 hidden in a package allegedly shipped from Africa.

Another case was detected on June 10, when customs officers at the same airport found 77 African elephant tusks, worth over $200,000, stashed in a parcel previously declared to contain personal belongings.

The package was suspected to have been sent from Nigeria, a western African country, through Doha International Airport in Qatar, a western Asian nation, to the airport, customs officers said.

By far the biggest interception of elephant tusks in Vietnam occurred in March 2009 when customs officers in northern Hai Phong City seized nearly seven tons of the contraband in a container shipped from Tanzania, a country in East Africa.

The international trade in elephant tusks has been prohibited since 1989 after the population of the African giants sharply decreased to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s from millions in the mid-20th century, AFP reported.

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