The smuggler’s South China Sea crossing

Chapter 3: a tale of the high seas, illicit smuggling and a betrayal.

ALLOW us to introduce you to another pangolin. Her name is Rainie, and the first time we meet her in a forest in Perak, she is bundled up in an Orang Asli hunter’s blue nylon mesh bag, curled up in a tight ball.

This is the beginning of the journey of many trafficked pangolins. Hunters sell the captured pangolins to middlemen, who then supply them in bulk to criminal syndicates that smuggle them across borders to high-demand markets.

Will Rainie be as lucky as Raymond? At this point, her fate is unknown. But many other pangolins who have been in the same situation as her end up stuffed into the cars and ships of smugglers, trafficked by the thousands, and slaughtered for their scales and meat

One shipment in 2010 carried 10 tonnes of pangolins, in a daring shipment across the South China Sea.

The 10-tonne shipment

According to court records, the voyage was a dramatic one. First a Malaysian smuggler flew to Macau, and then made his way to Zhuhai, a port city in southern China.

There he met up with his accomplices that included a ship captain and his four crewmen, all Chinese nationals.

On May 23, 2010, they set off onboard a wooden fishing vessel named Zhuwan 3815, crossing almost the entire South China Sea before meeting a trawler in the waters off the easternmost tip of Sarawak, at a point between Malaysian and Indonesian waters. They transferred a stash of frozen pangolin and scales from the trawler, and stored them in their ship’s freezer.

Then they cruised across Borneo’s western coast and met another trawler, receiving another batch of frozen pangolins and scales, before heading back across the South China Sea to a designated delivery point off the coast of Zhuhai International Airport.

Unbeknown to them, their arrest awaited them there. It was Day 15 of the voyage, and the Malaysian smuggler was counting pangolins on the ship’s deck when customs officers arrived and arrested them all.

In total 7.85 tonnes of frozen pangolins and 1.8 tonnes of scales were seized, equivalent to over 3,000 pangolins.

The waiting wife

There was a betrayal, the smuggler’s wife tells us when we meet her at their family home in Penang. Someone had tipped off the Chinese authorities, who were already waiting for the Zhuwan 3815 and its crew and contraband at the delivery point, she says.

“There was a representative from China and an agent from Hong Kong who came to Sabah. They checked the stock there before the delivery,” she says, politely implying that one of them was the traitor.

Court records paint the Malaysian smuggler as the mastermind of the crime, and handed him a life sentence. The captain and four crewmen, seen as hired accomplices, received five- to 10-year sentences.

But he was not the mastermind, says his wife. He was just a hired hand who coordinated local poachers to bring pangolins to a factory in

Sabah, where they were slaughtered, processed and frozen before being shipped out.

The real bosses stumped up the capital to buy the pangolins from the poachers. He was on the ship just to oversee the stock’s safe delivery to China.

“They pushed all the blame to him, made it seem like he was the boss,” she says. “And he was too loyal, he swallowed all the blame himself.”

The real mastermind, says the wife, is a big-time businessman in Sabah.

“I never spoke to him nor met him,” she says. “His lackeys are the ones who communicated with me.”

In the aftermath of the arrest, one of these lackeys called her with the news. They promised to take care of the matter, to hire lawyers for him, and that they would pay the family RM1,500 every month. They even paid for her and her daughter to visit him in the Guangzhou prison.

Nevertheless, all six men would lose their trials and subsequent appeals. Investigations cited in court revealed the shipment was not the first, which the wife confirms: “There were two previous shipments, but this one was the largest.”

And it seems it was not the last.

The largest pangolin seizure ever recorded

In February 2019, nine years after the smuggler’s arrest, Malaysian authorities raided two premises in Kota Kinabalu, seizing 27.9 tonnes of frozen, descaled, gutted pangolins in huge freezers along with a further 361kg of scales. It was the largest pangolin seizure ever recorded.

One of the raided premises, which was identified as a factory where pangolins are processed, is near Sepanggar Port – just off the waters where the 2010 smugglers transferred one batch of pangolins.

A source close to the investigations revealed that the manner in which the pangolins were packaged – in layers of plastic bags and boxes – suggests they were meant for export, most likely to China.

However, they have yet to confirm if the same syndicate is behind both cases.

One man was arrested, whom the source says was in charge of coordinating local poachers to supply pangolins to the factory, where the animals are processed and frozen.

He is now out on bail pending investigations. The bosses are believed to be still at large.

To be continued

Read R.AGE’s investigative storybook on the illegal pangolin trade at rage.my/pangolin