Two arrested for illicitly transporting seven tiger individuals
VOV.VN - Police in the central province of Nghe An on August 1 caught red handed two suspects illegally transporting seven healthy tiger individuals.
Tipped off by a reliable source, the provincial environmental police tracked down and stopped a white 7-seater minivan in Huong Son district for check early in the morning.
The minivan’s driver refused to obey the police’s command and drove the car away. The police chased after the van and finally controlled it.
Searching the vehicle, the police found seven live tigers weighing a total of 30 kilos.
The driver and his accomplice, who both reside in Huong Son district, confessed that they had been hired by a Lao citizen to transport the tiger to Vietnam for consumption.
A further investigation into the case is underway.
Trading tigers and related products is prohibited by Vietnamese law, and a violator will be given a seven year sentence in jail.
In Vietnam, tigers are poached and traded for their skin, which can later be processed into household decorations, while their bones can be slow-cooked into a thick paste which is rumored to cure a wide range of illnesses.
Tigers remain critically endangered in the country, with only five left in the wild in 2016, a drop from 30 in 2011, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
