Customs officers in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday spotted 529 kg of elephant tusks hidden in timbers, the municipal Customs Department said.
The tusks worth some 20 billion Vietnamese dong (nearly 900,000 US dollars) were found hidden in three containers of timbers at Saigon Port in the city.
Since October, customs officers at Cat Lai Port, also in the city, have spotted six cases of elephant tusk smuggling cases, confiscating a total of nearly 5 tons of elephant tusks.