Cambodia Expats Online: Forum | News | Information | Blog

How animal trafficking is organized in Asia. Long article but interesting:

The crime family at the centre of Asia's animal trafficking network
Bach brothers based in Vietnam and Thailand are responsible for smuggling thousands of tonnes of elephant ivory, rhino horn and other endangered species.
The Asian connection
The secret life of Nakhon Phanom revolves around one crime family, the Bachs. Four wildlife traffickers, speaking independently, name two of the Bach brothers as the key players who control the smuggling gateway from Thailand into Laos: Bach Mai, known to his friends as ‘Boonchai’, 38; and his older brother, Bach Van Limh, 45. Although they are active in Thailand, the brothers are originally Vietnamese and have networks in both countries...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ng-network

Interesting stuff, thanks for the link.

There's something here for everyone - endangered animals (sob!) and ugly Asian villains (boo!)
and Thai tarts (ooh!) going on lion-hunting safari ...

It is mildly surprising that the Thai monks and the drugged tigers aren't in the tale.

A brilliant comedy movie could be made out of this!

boozyoldman wrote:There's something here for everyone - endangered animals (sob!) and ugly Asian villains (boo!)
and Thai tarts (ooh!) going on lion-hunting safari ...

It is mildly surprising that the Thai monks and the drugged tigers aren't in the tale.

A brilliant comedy movie could be made out of this!

Hilarious.

There, Chumlong rapidly made friends with Thai sex workers in the bars of Pretoria. Through them, he got to know white South African landowners who bred lions on their ranches. Chumlong commissioned the killing of hundreds of lions and supervised the boiling of their corpses to separate the bones from the flesh. He then parceled up the bones in ten-kilo bags - roughly one bag for each dead animal - and shipped them back to the Bachs and to Keosavang, who variously sold them onwards to Vietnam and China to be boiled and brewed as a cheap substitute for tiger bones in health tonics (although there is no evidence of its medicinal effect).

Vietnam slammed for doing little to stop rhino horn trafficking
UPDATED : Tuesday, 27 September, 2016, 11:06pm

Vietnam has become the biggest hub in the world for trafficking in horns and other body parts of the rhinoceros, a critically endangered species that is being killed by poachers in South Africa at the rate of one every eight hours.

An estimated 1,300 rhinos are slaughtered for their horns across Africa annually – up from just 100 in 2008 – with the bulk of rhino horn smuggled by criminal gangs into Vietnam, according to surveys by international wildlife trade experts.
Yet Vietnam hasn’t launched a single successful high-level prosecution against illegal rhino horn traders.

The standing committee of CITES, the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species, meeting this week in South Africa, has warned Vietnam that the body will not tolerate the country’s failure to enforce bans on the rhino horn trade.

The warning suggests that possible trade sanctions could be in the offing as early as next year.
CITES is responsible for regulating trade in endangered species, including bans where appropriate, but depends on member states to enforce the ban.

“It’s beginning to look like the only way they will take it seriously is sanctions,” said Colman O’Criodain, trade analyst with the World Wildlife Fund, who complains that Vietnam had resisted action on wildlife trafficking for years...

Full article: http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast ... rafficking

Ivory seizures go on as Vietnam prepares to host international conference on illegal wildlife trafficking.

Around a half ton of ivory hidden in a timber shipment has been seized in Vietnam, an official said Friday, the second large haul of the illegally-trafficked product in a week.

Although the ivory trade is banned in Vietnam, the country remains a top market for ivory products prized locally for decorative and medicinal purposes.

It is also a busy thoroughfare for tusks trafficked from Africa destined for other parts of Asia.

The latest ivory haul was discovered at a Ho Chi Minh City port in two crates of timber from Mozambique, customs official Vo Thanh Hung told AFP...

Vietnam is hosting an international conference on illegal wildlife trade from November 17 to 18, which will be attended by Britain’s Prince William, who has repeatedly spoken out against wildlife trafficking.
http://hanoijack.com/2016/10/10/illegal ... d-vietnam/

Customs officials in South Africa arrested a Vietnamese man at O.R. Tambo International Airport outside Johannesburg on Wednesday for attempting to smuggle 28.7 kilograms (63.3 pounds) of rhino horn, according to local media outlet News24.
The horns, with an estimated value of ZAR6 million ($466,000), were spotted by a scanner when the man was trying to check in.

While South Africa’s Constitutional Court has lifted a ban on domestic sales of rhino horn, a global ban regulated by a U.N. convention remains in place, which means horn acquired legally in South Africa cannot be exported.

The sale and purchase of rhino horn is also banned in Vietnam, although the country remains one of the biggest consumers of the critically endangered animal.
Vietnam has developed an appetite for rhino horn on the back of economic expansion, with many people believing it can cure cancer, a myth conservation groups have scoffed at. Vietnam’s last Javan rhino, a rare Southeast Asian species, was found dead in 2010 with its horn hacked off.
- Vnexpress