Malaysian authorities seize 1.6 ml USD worth of ivory

Malaysian customs authorities seized 7.2 million ringgit (1.6 million U.S dollars) worth of ivory on Sunday, in the first major smuggled case in the new year, officials said Wednesday.

The seizure, which included 254 elephant tusks weighing more than 840 kilograms, was made by customs officers at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, said Selangor Customs director Hamzah Sundang at a press conference on Wednesday.

He said the ivory was flown in via Turkish Airlines from Kinshasa International Airport, with Turkey's Istanbul Ataturk Airport as the transit point.

So far, no suspects have been arrested and the address on the crates, which was located to Cheras of Kuala Lumpur, was fake, according to Hamzah.

As of December, Malaysian authorities in 2016 have seized more than 10.9 million ringgit worth of ivory, weighing 1,054 kg, much more than the 259.9 kg seized in 2015, said Hamzah, who described the ivory smuggling in Malaysia as "becoming more rampant."

In September, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, pointed to Malaysia as the world's "paramount ivory transit country," with its ports serving as a major gateway for the flow of tonnes of illicit ivory between Africa and Asia.

According to the organization, ivory seizure records from January 2003 to May 2014 linked Malaysia to 66 confiscations worldwide totaling a massive 63 419 kg. Only 19 of the seizures were made in Malaysia. The remaining 47 occurred outside the country, mostly after shipments had passed undetected through Malaysia's ports. Enditem