Chinese man who smuggled five rhino horns through the Netherlands is jailed by Dutch court
The smuggler was trying to take the horns from South Africa to Shanghai when they were found in his luggage in an Amsterdam airport in December. He has also been fined US$613,000
A Chinese man has been sentenced to a year in a Dutch jail for smuggling five rhino horns and four other horn objects worth about €500,000 (US$613,000) in his luggage.
The man was caught by customs officials at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in December, as he transited from South Africa to the Chinese city of Shanghai. He was sentenced on Friday.
“The Amsterdam court has sentenced a 30-year-old man of Chinese nationality to 12 months in prison for smuggling rhino horns and falsifying a visa,” the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority said.
It added that trading in endangered species is banned under the 45-year-old Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which prohibits the sales of protected animals and plants.
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South Africa is battling a scourge of rhino poaching fueled by demand for their horns in Asia. The country’s ministry of environmental affairs said earlier this year that 1,028 rhinos were slaughtered in 2017.