VIETNAMESE ARRESTED IN MAJOR HONG KONG BLOOD IVORY BUST
(Posted 11th June 2014)
Hong Kong airport security made an unexpected windfall bust of blood ivory, when their flight arrived in Hong Kong from Ethiopia. When the baggage was offloaded from the plane, and then routinely screened before being transferred to a connecting flight on to South Korea, it was found to contain at least 32 suitcases stuffed with tusks and sawn off pieces of ivory, weighing a total of nearly 800 kilogramms.
15 suspects were subsequently identified as owners of the baggage and arrested. They reportedly started their journey in Angola and then routed via Addis Ababa to Hong Kong, from where they were to continue their journey via Seoul to Cambodia. The quantity confiscated on a single flight, carried in passenger baggage, was termed as ‘unprecedented’ by authorities and questions are already being asked how they could check in their bags in Luanda for an international flight without detection and how the baggage made it in Addis Ababa to a connecting flight, equally without being spotted. The entire consignment is suspected to have had China as its final destination as some of the ivory found was already shaped into seals, something commonly used by affluent Chinese. Bouquets to the vigilant security personnel in Hong Kong and mega barbs to those in Luanda and Addis Ababa who failed to detect, or even worse facilitated the shipment.
