Huge illegal rhino horn shipments seized

15 มีนาคม 2560

The Customs Department seized 21 "unusually large" rhinoceros horns worth around $5 million on the black market โ€“ 148.2 million baht. Two Thai women suspects fled the airport and managed to evade arrest.

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Huge rhino horn shipments seized at Bangkok, Hanoi

Bangkok Post, with Agency Reports

The Customs Department seized 21 "unusually large" rhinoceros horns worth around $5 million on the black market – 148.2 million baht.

The 50kg of horns were being smuggled by two Thai women who fled the airport and managed to evade arrest.

Also on Tuesday, Vietnam police at Hanoi's Noi Bai international airport seized more than 100 kilogrammes of rhino horn smuggled into the country in suitcases from Kenya.

The brazen killing of a rhinoceros at a wildlife park near Paris by assailants who removed a horn valued at nearly triple the price of gold has put zookeepers and customs worldwide on notice that poaching could be spreading beyond the killing fields of Africa and Asia.

Officials in France said Tuesday that a 5-year-old white rhinoceros named Vince was shot three times in the head by poachers who broke into the Thoiry Zoo. They used a chain saw to remove the rhino's horn.

At Suvarnabhumi, Customs officers found the horns in luggage belonging to a woman who arrived on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Phnom Penh, Phaisal Cheunjit, an adviser to the Customs Department, said.

The other suspect arrived on a flight from Vietnam but they were spotted talking to each other after they arrived, he said.

Customs and airport officials became suspicious because the bag looked heavy, so decided to scan it to see what was inside, Mr Phaisal said.

The women fled when they were being escorted to customs by airport officials and saw the bag being scanned, he said.

They were identified only by their first names as Thiitrat and Kansinee, who are 46 and 41 years old respectively, Mr Phaisal said.

Ms Thitirat, a Bangkok resident, was the passenger from Phnom Penh, while Ms Kansinee, a Nakhon Pathom resident, was on the Vietnam flight, he said.

Both are believed to be members of a wildlife trafficking gang.

The haul of the prized animal parts at Noi Bai airport were found hidden in luggage on a flight from Nairobi, according to the official publication of the Hanoi police department.

"After scanning and checking, customs officials discovered the two suitcases of 57 kilograms (125 pounds) and 61 kilograms were full of suspected rhino horns," the online Capital Security Newspaper reports said.

Photos showed the huge haul in suitcases and stacked on tables, almost a carbon copy of the Bangkok seizure.

Black market rhino horn sells for up to $60,000 per kilo – more than gold or cocaine – with demand principally coming from China and Vietnam where it is coveted as a traditional medicine and supposed aphrodisiac.

One horn can weigh four kilos – comprised exclusively of keratin, the same substance in human hair and fingernails.