Slippery salesman smuggled rare eels out of UK

A SEAFOOD salesman has been given a two-year suspended jail sentence after smuggling more than £53m worth of endangered live eels out of the UK.

Gilbert Khoo, 67, transported the rare elvers from London to Hong Kong, hidden underneath chilled fish, between 2015-17, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard.

Khoo, of Chessington in Surrey, was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment on each of three counts of evasion of a prohibition on the export of goods. Each sentence was suspended for two years. He was also found guilty of three counts of failure to notify movement of animals.

But no penalty was imposed at yesterday’s sentencing because hearings to retrieve the proceeds of crime will take place in the future.

Khoo was caught after Border Force officers found 200kg of the

European “glass eels”, which are on the verge of extinction, at Heathrow Airport, in the first seizure of its kind in the UK.

The prosecution said the crimes took place over two years and involved 16 consignments with an estimated retail value of £53,265,000 in the illegal eel market in Asia.

Khoo kept the live eels, imported from EU countries, in a barn in Gloucestershire, before repackaging them to be exported to Asia.

Judge Jeffrey Pegden QC, who also ordered Khoo to do 240 hours of unpaid community work, said: “In my view ,you played a leading role in this country in what was a large commercial operation driven by others, the purchasers abroad.”

The judge said he had “no doubt at all” that Khoo’s criminal operation had “a significant environmental impact upon the European glass eel”.