A court in east Zhejiang Province on Tuesday sentenced 17 people to prison for smuggling more than 23 tons of pangolin scales into the country from Nigeria.
The scales,
worth more than 180 million Yuan (US$27.9 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, surnamed Yao and Wang, were sentenced to 14 and 13 years in prison,
respectively. Other suspects received jail terms ranging from one year and
three months to 12 years.
The China
Daily reported in December 2020, that in September last year custom authorities
in Wenzhou found two people selling pangolin scales, which are often used in
traditional Chinese medicine, in a black market in the Guangxi Zhuang
autonomous region.
At the end of
October, customs received a tip that a batch of scales would be smuggled into
China and those two people would be involved, the publication said.
"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," said Feng
Chenxue, an Hangzhou Customs official.
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.
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