Vietnam: 700Kg rhino horns and elephant tusks hidden in fake marble seized by customs

Law enforcement officers examining the seized tusks and horns (C)TuoiTre

Customs officers at Tien Sa Port in the central city of Da Nang were reported to have seized more than 700Kg of rhino horns and elephant tusks hidden inside blocks of fake marble shipped from Mozambique. The smuggled animal parts were hidden in two containers on board the Liberian-flagged ship King Brian.
According to the customs declaration form made for the goods, these containers contained raw natural marble worth VND450 million (US$20,250) and the importer was Da Nang-based Van An Co. Ltd., the TuoiTreNews reports.
During the inspection, customs officers discovered some suspicious signs in many blocks of marble in one of the two containers, so they decided to shatter some of them. To their surprise, the smashed pieces of marble exposed elephant tusks and rhino horns hidden inside. Such an inspection continued and the customs force finally found a total of 593kg of tusks and 142kg of rhino inside blocks of fake marble. Currently, the price of rhino horn on the black market can be up to $133 per gram, while that of ivory is around $2,100 per kg, they added.

         Tusks found in a container of jade               (C)Nguyen Tu

The trade of tusks was banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1977, as well as Vietnamese law, as African ivory is listed in the World’s Red Book, customs officers said. But the trade has flourished in recent years, particularly thanks to demand from Vietnam and China with devastating results for Africa's rhino populations, News24 reports. There are around just 5 000 black rhinos left on the planet and an estimated 20 000 white rhino, mostly in southern Africa. In 2011, the western black rhino, a subspecies last seen in Cameroon, was declared extinct.
By far the biggest interception of elephant tusks in Vietnam occurred in March 2009 when customs officers in the northern city of Hai Phong seized nearly seven tons of the contraband goods in a container shipped from Tanzania, East Africa.