Pangolin smugglers jailed for trafficking 23 tonnes of scales.
On 5 January 2021, a Court in east Zhejiang Province in China sentenced 17 people to imprisonment for smuggling more than 23 tonnes of pangolin scales into the country. The scales, worth about US$27.9 million (HK$216 million), were smuggled by the gang from Nigeria in three batches in 2018 and 2019, according to the intermediate people's court in Zhejiang's Wenzhou City.
The two main suspects, identified by their surnames Yao and Wang, were sentenced to 14 and 13 years’ imprisonment and fined four million and three million yuan respectively. Other suspects received jail terms ranging from 15 months’ imprisonment to 14 years. It was reported that Yao and Wang had started trafficking the scales, which are valued for their use in traditional Chinese medicine, in 2018. An associate smuggled them into the country from Nigeria and the pair then onsold the scales in Mainland China.
The gang was caught in October 2019, when Wenzhou police seized over 10,940kg of pangolin scales after they intercepted a shipment. At the time it was considered the largest haul seized that year with an estimated value of US$17.6 million (HK$136 million).
Feng Chenxue, a Hangzhou Customs official explained: -
"A man surnamed Cai purchased pangolin scales in Nigeria and entrusted an overseas smuggling group to transport them to Busan first. Then, the man's two partners in Wenzhou hired another group to deliver them to Wenzhou via Shanghai."
The containers with scales, mixed with slices of ginger, were unloaded at a wharf in Shanghai and then transferred to Wenzhou where local customs authorities seized the containers and caught the suspects, according to Feng.
"The smuggled pangolin scales were wrapped with layers of ginger slices in bags, which makes them hard to detect during routine spot checks," said Chen Ling, a policeman from Wenzhou Public Security Bureau.
A report by Science and Technology Daily estimated that more than 50,000 pangolins would have been killed to generate such a haul. Data collected by the African Pangolin Working Group showed that in 2019 alone, more than 97 tonnes of scales from more than 150,000 African pangolins were intercepted by the authorities.
Three of the eight species of pangolin found in Asia and Africa are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, including the Chinese pangolin.
Beijing has stepped up its protections in recent years, banning the hunting of pangolins in 2007, and outlawing the imports of the animals and their by-products 11 years later. But trafficking has remained rampant. Ac cording to the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, 1 23 tonnes of pangolin scales were confiscated by Chinese authorities in 2019 alone.
Following the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, the Chinese government passed a fast track ban last February on the trade and consumption of wild animals in an effort to avoid further outbreaks.