Smuggled ivory worth almost half a million dollars seized in Thailand

DPA, 12th JANUARY, 2018  -  Ivory worth 15 million baht (469,800 dollars) smuggled from Nigeria has been seized in Thailand, customs officials said on Friday.  

Three elephant tusks and 31 ivory pieces weighing a combined 148 kilograms were seized at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok, Kulit Sombatsiri, director general of the customs department told a press conference.  

The smuggled goods were shipped from the Nigeria’s commercial centre of Lagos to Bangkok on an Ethiopian Airlines flight on December 20.  

Two weeks later, as no one came to pick up the packages, airport officials opened them up to find the smuggled goods, Kulit said.  

“The registered address in Thailand also doesn’t exist,” the director general said.  

“The massive size of the tusks indicate that they did not belong to Thai elephants. We will need to conduct a DNA test to determine where they really come from,” he added.  

Ivory trade has been outlawed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), but smuggling from Africa into Asia persists.