Seizure on 31 March 2020 of 6.16 tons of pangolin scales with an estimated value of 17.9 million US$ or 2,900 US$/kg. The final destination could only be China. Wildlife smuggling always goes to the country with the highest demand and the highest bidder (cf. Robin des Bois’ “ Atlas of the Business of Endangered Species “, published by Arthaud in October 2019, in French only).
© JKDM
This is the largest scale seizure in Malaysia since the beginning of the year. The container was officially transporting cashew nuts. The voyage of a container ship from West Africa, e.g. Nigeria, to Malaysia takes about 2 months. So this cashew nut/pangolin shipment was organized between African traffickers and Chinese dealers in early 2020 after the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in China and within the emergence of the global pandemic.
This cashew nut nexus had already been identified:
– in May 2019, in Viet Nam, with a seizure of 5.264 tons of scales distributed in 2 20-foot sea containers (151 bags were filled with scales and 63 with cashew nuts. The 2 containers had been shipped from Nigeria;
– in May 2018, in Viet Nam, with a seizure of 87 bags containing 3.3 tons of scales among bags of cashew nuts in transit to Cambodia;
– in September 2014, at Ho Chi Minh City airport in Viet Nam, with a seizure of 40 kg of raw ivory in a cashew nut package;
– in 2012, in Manila, Philippines, with a seizure of 6 rhino horns from a shipping container carrying cashew nuts from Mozambique.