WORLD : Ivory Smuggling Ring Cracked
Police have cracked one of the world’s biggest illegal rhinoceros horn and elephant tusk operations, shutting off an Africa-to-Asia smuggling pipeline, officers announced today.
Police valued the tusks and horns at $2.73 million. Police arrested two Taiwanese citizens caught with 29 rhino horns and in a related swoop caught another Taiwanese and a South African who had seven tusks and allegedly tried to send 81 horns to Taiwan, said Capt. Pieter Lategan of the Endangered Species Protection Unit.
Lategan said the horns and tusks probably were sent from Malawi via Swaziland to South Africa to be processed in Taiwan for sale as aphrodisiacs and pain-killer powder.
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