Seized pieces of rhino horns in Singapore, in a photo released in January 2024. (National Parks Board of Singapore via AFP)
- Rhino horn and elephant tusk smugglers can now go to jail for up to 20 years in Singapore.
- That country said it will treat wildlife trafficking as a serious offence under laws to combat organised crime.
- It has seen huge shipments of rhino horn from South Africa, and ivory from the DRC in recent years.
Wildlife trafficking is now a “serious offence” under Singapore’s organised crime law, the city-state’s interior ministry has said, with those prosecuted under the code subject to sentences of up to 20 years behind bars.
Singapore is a preferred transhipment route for traffickers, conservationists say, with Southeast Asia at the centre of much of the multibillion-dollar illicit industry.
In October 2022 Singapore made its biggest seizure of rhino horn, confiscating a R15 million haul from a smuggler arriving from South Africa and intending to travel on to Laos.
And in July of 2019, Singapore made its largest seizure of smuggled ivory, impounding nearly nine tonnes of contraband tusks from an estimated 300 elephants.
That cargo from the Democratic Republic of Congo was bound for Vietnam.
“The Ministry of Home Affairs will be including wildlife trade offences as serious offences in the Schedule of the Organised Crime Act 2015 with effect from 30 August 2024,” the MHA said in a statement on Thursday.
If found to have links with crime groups, offenders could face up to 20 years in prison under the organised crime act, the ministry added.
The offences include the import and export of endangered species and their transit without a permit issued under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The inclusion also empowers authorities to seize ill-gotten gains from wildlife traders with links to organised crime.
Wildlife traffickers without links to organised crime are not covered by the act, and only face up to six years in jail.
The organised crime law covers offences considered serious threats to public safety and security, and those associated with criminal groups, like drug trafficking and unlicensed moneylending.
“International wildlife trafficking operates through a sophisticated cross-border supply chain,” the MHA said.
The move was a “proactive measure” to deter operations of “organised crime groups should such activities emerge in Singapore in the future”, it added.
Southeast Asia is “at the epicentre” of much of the illicit trade, with Singapore seen as a convenient transhipment route by organised crime groups because it is a regional commercial hub, environmental group WWF-Singapore said on its website.
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