Vietnam

Articles on Illicit Wildlife Trading in Southeast Asia

A Trans-border Wildlife Trade Network Unmasked

Author: Quoc Dung
Part IV: Exposing the Truth (see Part I and Part II and Part III)
Unofficial translation by Trinh Hoai Thuong (PanNature)

In March 2004, Trung Viet Co. imported nearly 1,000 Macaca fascicularis through Cau Treo Border Crossing, Central Ha Tinh Province, bordering Laos’ Bolikhamxay Province. The permit for this transfer¹ was not issued until 12 April 2004 by the Laos Management Authority. If the time of import is correct, it is clear that Trung Viet completed shipment without prior approval. More significantly, the copy of the Laos permit obtained from the Vietnam’s FPD was almost totally altered, except the date of issue.

In the set of documents that Vietnam’s Forest Protection Department (FPD) reluctantly provided in Hanoi after many requests over a period of more than one month, there is a list of specimens attached to the export permits. The list shows a  dubiously large number of wildlife specimens.

According to the FPD documents, in addition to the permit for Trung Viet to export 7,000 monkeys from April 12th to December 12th, 2004 (including 5,000 long-tailed macaques), Xay Savang Company was allowed to export 13,000 rare and valuable wild snakes and 60,000 wild turtles.

An experienced wildlife trader says it’s very rare to see the management authority of any exporting country allow export of such a great number of specimens with only one permit.

Beside denials from officials in the Lao Customs Department (CD), two officials of the Lao Forest Department (FD), who met me in Vietiane, confirmed that they did not give permits to any Lao companies to export long-tailed macaques, snakes, or turtles to any Vietnamese companies.

According to Mr. Bouaphanh Phanthavong, Acting Head of Forestry Resources Conservation Division, Laos’ Forestry Department recently awarded permits to just three Lao companies to set up wildlife farms. To obtain these permits, the companies must have obtained certificates from the Lao Scientific Authority.

This helped to confirm the authenticity of the information provided by the head of the Lao Scientific Authority, Dr. Sourioudong Sundara, who had told me he had never issued certificates to any Lao companies to export wildlife to Vietnam. The two Lao FD officials were also surprised about the reports of long-tailed macaques being exported from Laos to Vietnam being published on the CITES website. They admit they were not aware of the data provided by this reporter.

Both of the Lao officials were very knowledgeable about illegal wildlife trade cases in Lao territory during recent years. However, they were unaware of any reports about the illegal monkey trade. Therefore, unlike the Lao Customs Department, the Lao Forestry Department has not yet investigated or prosecuted any illicit wildlife trading cases, due to a lack of enforcement personnel, as acknowledgement by the aforementioned FD officials.

More surprisingly, the whole set of documents allowing Xay Savang Co. to export 80,000 wild animals to Trung Viet Co., was confirmed as fake by Mr. Thongphath Vongmany, the Vice Director of the Forestry Department.

Vietnam’s FPD provided me copies of these four documents after many requests and initial refusals:

1. A Vietnamese translation copy of export permit No. 0652/LN.04, purportedly issued in Vientiane, dated  June 12th, 2004 by Lao Forestry Department;
2. A Laos language version of the above document;
3. A list of goods in English enclosed with the export permit No. 0652/LN.04, dated April 12th, 2004, and
4. A confirmation letter in English dated April 12th, 2004, about the same permit. signed by Mr. Veunevang Bouttalath (then Vice Director of the FD) to Dr. Nguyen Ba Thu (then Director of Vietnam FPD and Head of Vietnam’s CITES Management  Authority).

Examining these documents with me, Mr. Vongmany notes the following:

• The fourth document is invalid because the signature of the then-Vice Director of Laos’ Forestry Department (Mr. Veunevang Bouttalath) is not stamped with an official seal. In addition, this document was not numbered: the space for the document number was left empty.
• The second document is very different from the original archived in the office of Lao Forestry Department.

Generally, both documents² mention the wildlife trading business. That is, the documents concern transport of wild animals by a Lao company to a Vietnamese counterpart. Furthermore, the lists of goods in two documents are relatively similar in terms of categories of species like snakes, turtles, and monkeys.

Nevertheless, according to Mr. Vongmany, the discrepancies  between them are fundamental and lead to major changes of the entire trading situation.

Instead of only allowing transit of goods from Malaysia to Vietnam through Laos in the original document, the copy states the permission for the Lao company to directly export wild animals from Lao to Vietnam.

Moreover, according to the copy, the number of monkeys allowed to be exported from Laos to Vietnam is much higher than the number allowed to leave from Malaysia to Vietnam through Lao.

Deadly discrepancies

Here are the major discrepancies between the two documents, the original and the copy

Table I

Table II

In short, the real permit for transit of wildlife from Malaysia through Laos to Vietnam (the original) was turned into an export permit from Laos into Vietnam (the copy).

There are other notable discrepancies, such as the number of monkeys. While the original permit allows the transit of only 1,450 monkeys, the copy permit gives permission for direct import of 7,000 monkeys, including 5,000 long-tailed macaques.

An international network?

We have navigated a long process to prove that the Lao permits to export wildlife to Vietnam’s Trung Viet Company turned out to be forged. With proof collected and assembled, it is believed that the wild animals imported by Tran Quy did not come from Laos. So where did they come from?

Our initial investigation at Ka Tum Border Gate, in southwest Tay Ninh Province, shows that those animals actually came from Cambodia through illegal channels. (There will be another report on this issue).

In principle, if animals originated from Laos with the permission of Lao authorities, then transited through Cambodia, that would require the Cambodia CITES Management Authorityto issue transit permits. The Cambodia Customs Office would have also had to provide customs clearance permits to Tran Quy’s shipments that transited through Cambodia. After these procedures, the specimens could then be legally re-exported to Vietnam, using the same process of transporting animals from Malaysia through Laos to Vietnam that was referred to above.

However, at the Ka Tum Border Gate Customs Department, where Tran Quy’s network submitted the wildlife import files, Vietnamese authorities did not provide any papers from Cambodia.

In addition to Cambodia, some of the wild animals imported by Tran Quy’s network supposedly came from Malaysia. The original transit permit from the Laos FD verified that all snakes, soft-shell turtles, turtles and monkeys came from Malaysia with the permission of Malaysia CITES 

In fact, there were fewer wild animals imported to Vietnam by Mr Tran Quy’s network from Malaysia than stated in the permit. According to an anonymous source, who is in Tran Quy’s network, the remaining quantity came from illegal sources in  Cambodia.
 
So, is it possible that the papers from Malaysia were also forged? One of our sources claimed that documents were forged for exporting goods from each country. For example, in Malaysia, permits supposedly issued by Malaysian authorities were forged to allow transit through Laos, Thailand or Cambodia into Vietnam and then to China.

Monkeys captured in Malaysia must go through illegal transportation channels because Malaysia prohibited export of monkeys from 1987 until August of 2007. According to the above-mentioned anonymous informant, these animals were transported via hired airplanes, and they were declared to authorities to be goods such as vegetables to allow transit through airports. The monkeys were anaesthetized, bound and gagged in order to keep them silent.

The source revealed that other networks, beside Tran Quy’s, smuggle animals from Malaysia and Cambodia through Vietnam to China. Each animal brings an average price of US$200-300 at the Vietnam-China border.

According to an official from the south central Khanh Hoa Province’s FDP, a shipment of long-tailed macaques was confiscated in Khanh Hoa Province of Vietnam on 11 September, 2007. The truck was driven by Mr. Trinh Xuan Huy, a resident of northern Ninh Binh Province, and held 90 long-tailed macaques. The anonymous official noted that Chinese companies prefer to buy monkeys from Trung Viet over other networks because only Trung Viet can obtain so-called “legal” permits.

In many cases, Trung Viet was not able to supply enough monkeys to fulfill the permits. By purchasing the excess permits from Trung Viet, the Chinese would be able to convert smuggled monkeys from other sources into legal ones. This is reported to be the trick used by Mr. Tran Quy’s Tan Hoi Dong Company, who established wildlife farms to make the illegally imported monkeys from Cambodia and other South-East Asian countries appear to be legally bred monkeys.

A relationship between Tran Quy and Vietnam CITES Authority?

“Is there any special relationship between Tran Quy and someone in Vietnam CITES Management Authority?”, an official from the Viet Nam’s Environment Police Department asked this reporter.

For the original permit issued by the Lao FD allowing a Lao company to transit wildlife from Malaysia to Vietnam, we found the Vietnam Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development (MARD) should have probably known about, the specific information in the original permit.

The items in the box labeled “Pursuant to...” in the original document include “the agreement of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam”. This means MARD, which oversees the Forest Protection Department, in principle, was to be informed before the deal. Furthermore, it is likely that the FPD, who provided the documents, knew they were fake.

The anonymous source described the relationship between Tran Quy and the Vietnam CITES Management Authority, as follows:

“The export country’s permits were usually faxed by Mr Tran Quy’s network to the Vietnam’s CITES Management Authority Office with false titles and seals. Based on these fake faxed documents, an official of the Vietnam CITES Management Authority issued hundreds of permits for Tran Quy’s network with large quantity of wild animals allowed to be traded“.

Also according to the source, based on the fake Lao permits, Vietnam’s CITES Management Authority issued about 200 permits allowing Trung Viet to import more than 20,000 long-tailed macaques and hundreds of thousands of wild turtles and snakes since 2003.
It is impossible to verify this information because no agencies in Vietnam provided us with copies of permits issued by the Laos’ CITES Management Authority.

However, the source noted, those Lao permits are not in the standard format used by CITES (with CITES-issued labels and the signature of the authorized person). Instead, they are just papers written in English with fake seals and signatures, and lists of species names and quantities.

This process allows the local companies to ignore CITES regulations. They can collect and export thousands of wild animals using their forged CITES documents.

It is easy for Tran Quy to have legal documents like the ones issued by the FPD in southern Dong Nai Province, where NAFOVANNY (which is 40 percent state-owned) is located. For example, one document dated 6 May 2005 concerns verification of monkeys that were allegedly illegal to import: “Today, in Dong Nai: The monkeys arrived at the [NAFOVANNY] farm from a legal source”.

According to the UNDP email discussion forum on wildlife conservation in Vietnam, the three top countries with booming exports of monkeys to biological research labs in the US are China, Vietnam and Indonesia. Conservation experts in this forum say most of the monkeys imported to the US are wild. International conservation organizations have investigated the suspicious trade networks in Vietnam. Until now, they have not found any significant evidence.

Primate Products Inc, the American partner of Tran Quy’s Tan Hoi Dong Co. is among four major Macaca fascicularis labs that import more than 1,000 individuals annually. In 2004, Primate Products imported 1,152 macaca. In 2005, the number increased to 2,340. The price is said to be around US$1,000 per live monkey.

Also according to the secret source, instead of using intermediaries, Primate Products  managed to import monkeys directly from Vietnam some years ago through contacts with Tran Quy.  But it took until the end of 2006 for Primate Products to arrange their imports through  the Tan Hoi Dong and Trung Viet companies, affiliates of Mr. Tran Quy’s network, as the agencies who can provide the animals at a lower price and with stable sources.

There are indications that Tran Quy is trying to erase the records of allegedly illegal activities. Trung Viet plans to sell 75 percent of its stock to its US partner, Tran Quy said in a private meeting in Hanoi on 15th July, 2007. He says his company, in partnership with Primate Products, intends to launch a stem cell research lab at Ba Den Mountain, a famous tourist site in southern Tay Ninh .

If his statement is proved to be true, the first step for Tran Quy will be to dissolve Trung Viet. The confidential resource explained that  Tran Quy thinks that if the illicit wildlife trade ring is uncovered, he could escape prosecution if Trung Viet, which he directs, disappeared. According to the anonymouse source, there is also information that Tran Quy is trying to set up another enterprise to replace Trung Viet.

Inquiries concerning these forged documents were sent directly to the Minister and the Chief Inspector of MARD since early July, 2007. There has been no reply from either of them. When we met with the FPD, we found these letters were forwarded to FPD and Vietnam CITES Authority.

Why didn’t the directors of MARD reply to reporters at Tien Phong as required by the National Press Laws? Did the leaders and inspectors of MARD know about the rampant, long-term  and massive trans-border wildlife trade with by Tran Quy’s network?

(A second series of investigative stories is due out around the end of December).

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