Thai customs unveils a huge amount of smuggled Ivory, in their second biggest recovery

May 8 , 2015 In the second largest seizure in the nation’s history, Thai customs displayed more than three tonnes of confiscated African ivory valued at $6 million. The source of the illegal loot, consisting of Five hundred and eleven pieces of African elephant tusks was from Mombasa, Kenya.

The smugglers had disguised the ivory in bags of tea leaves, aboard a cargo ship in Kenya , and passed through several ports from Sri Lanka to Malaysia then Singapore and finally Thailand, where luck ran out on them due to the officers’ better intelligence.

Minister of Natural Resources and Environment General Dapong Ratanasuwan, spoke on the issue,

“Officials knew the ports where they (the smugglers) usually send out the tusks from Africa. We know the country and the ports, so if they use Thailand as a country to pass through, we will monitor more carefully,”

“The National Police, one of the departments responsible for solving this problem, has arrested the investors or people involved in the confiscation,”

Officials said the final destination listed in official documents was Laos.

Thailand had a March deadline to take measures to shut down domestic trade in illegal elephant ivory or face sanctions under the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species.