Customs in the northern city of Mong Cai bordering China on Sunday said they had confiscated over one ton of ivory hidden in a shipment, Dan Tri newswire reported.
Officials on October 22 found 221 tusks weighing 1,061kg in total concealed among bags of rolls of fabric in a boat traveling down a river in Ka Long Ward driven by Lai Hoa Tai, a Chinese national.
Tai told the local customs that another Chinese man named Vuong Ba Kien had hired him to transport the ivory from Mong Cai to China.
Tai has been detained for questioning.
Last month, the police in the central province of Nghe An have caught 3 men and confiscated 209 kg of ivory that they had smuggled into Vietnam.
In May, 2011, customs officers in the northern city of Hai Phong seized 2 tons of ivory that arrived from Kenya in two containers labeled as dried seaweed and set to be re-exported to China.
Two weeks later, Hai Phong’s customs continued to confiscate more 22 tons of ivory smuggled in from Malaysia in a container purported to have red algae in the country's biggest ivory seizure.
In 2009, Vietnam authorities confiscated nearly 7 tons of elephant tusks smuggled from Tanzania.
Print
