Ball sculptures, incense burners, Buddha statues, animals, and exquisite landscape and figure ornaments carved from whole ivory... These beautiful ivory products in front of the reporter are part of the physical objects in a large-scale smuggling case of ivory and its products seized by Shijiazhuang Customs with the cooperation of Beijing Customs. The case involves 1,639 pieces of smuggled ivory and its products, weighing 101.4 kilograms. It is the largest smuggling case of ivory products seized by Chinese customs this year. Recently, the reporter went to the Beijing Customs Express Mail Supervision Center to interview the investigation and investigation process of this case.

Fuzzy address leads to a major ivory case

"On July 22, we found three large boxes of express mail from Japan, sent to a place in Langfang, Hebei, and declared the product name as "handicrafts", but the express address was simple and vague. The price of the mailed items was lower than the freight, which was obviously unreasonable. Based on past experience, we believed that there was a risk of smuggling." Li Yunpeng, deputy chief of the Express Section of the Beijing Customs Post Office Office, recalled. So the customs officers on site checked the items with an X-ray machine and found that the images were suspected to be ivory products. After further inspection, they found that they were all suspected ivory products. In the following days, 12 boxes of express mail from the same address in Japan were found on site, and they were all suspected ivory products.

Since the delivery address of these 15 boxes of express mail was in Hebei, according to the principle of territorial jurisdiction of customs, Beijing Customs handed over the clues of this case to the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of Shijiazhuang Customs.

Locked in the suspect and caught him with the evidence

After receiving the clues, the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of Shijiazhuang Customs immediately organized forces to conduct an investigation. After careful analysis, it quickly locked in the actual owners of the batch of items, Wang and Sun. In view of the fact that Wang and Sun were likely to take the packages away in a short time, the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of Shijiazhuang Customs quickly set up a special task force, closely monitored the mail involved in the case, and carefully formulated a capture plan to strive to catch the suspect with the evidence.

On July 27, knowing that Wang and Sun might go to a courier collection point in Langfang to pick up the package, the task force decided to arrest the target suspects at the collection site. At around 10 a.m. that day, the suspects Wang and Sun drove their vehicles to the collection point one after another. Wang entered the business hall first to sign for one of the packages, and was immediately arrested on the spot by the investigators waiting there; the other suspect Sun was very cunning. After getting off the car, he kept wandering around the collection point and watching. Seeing that Wang had not returned for a long time, he felt that something was wrong and tried to drive away from the scene. Seeing this, another group of investigators ambushed in the surrounding area quickly intercepted Sun's vehicle and arrested him.

Afterwards, the anti-smuggling officers searched the residences of the two suspects. In a garage rented by Wang, the anti-smuggling police seized some suspected ivory products such as mahjong tiles and necklaces. In a remote firewood room in his rural hometown dozens of kilometers away, they seized another five boxes of ivory products, including some large and exquisitely carved ones.

It is difficult to distinguish the authenticity of counterfeit smuggled ivory

After several days and nights of hard and meticulous work, Shijiazhuang Customs successfully destroyed a black network that smuggled ivory and its products from Japan to China. At present, the Shijiazhuang Customs Anti-smuggling Bureau has detained the suspects Wang and Sun in accordance with the law.

According to the expert appraisal of the Forest Public Security Judicial Appraisal Center of the State Forestry Administration, this batch of suspected ivory and its products seized by the customs weighed more than 130 kilograms, of which 100 kilograms and 1,639 pieces were ivory and its products, many of which were made with exquisite craftsmanship. In particular, hollowing and carving belong to traditional ivory carving techniques. Similar handicrafts on the market are extremely expensive, and there are many fine works with a unit price of millions.

At the same time, after identification, there are more than 30 kilograms of this batch of goods, including 3,090 pieces (mostly small pieces) such as necklaces, bracelets, and incense burners. The raw materials are other animal bones or resins and plastic products, and the degree of counterfeiting ivory is extremely high. If mixed with many genuine products, it is difficult for non-professionals to identify and it is easy to be deceived.

Online transactions and domestic sales

According to Shijiazhuang Customs, the suspects in this case all used online shopping to smuggle and sell contraband.

The suspects in this case purchased ivory products on a Japanese website. After paying the fees through an online payment platform, the website sent the items to a designated location in China by mail. However, the waybill only indicated the names of the goods such as "handicrafts" and "necklaces", and did not indicate words related to "ivory", and the consignor and consignee all used pseudonyms. After the package enters the country, the suspect will sign for it after repeated observation and probing. If he finds any abnormality during this period, he will decisively abandon the package and flee the scene; the hiding places of the goods are also hidden and scattered. After receiving the package, the suspect still contacts other Chinese buyers through the Internet to sell it for profit.

It is understood that currently only a few ivory product stores approved by the relevant departments of the State Forestry Administration can sell ivory products in China, and personal purchases are limited to collections, and buying and selling are strictly prohibited. If you buy ivory and its products through illegal channels such as the Internet, you will bear the corresponding legal responsibilities.

Legal Network, Beijing, August 15th

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