Smuggler sent live glass eels worth £53m to the Far East

A SEAFOOD salesman has been found guilty of smuggling more than £53million worth of endangered live eels out of the UK.

Gilbert Khoo, 66, transported the rare elvers from London to Hong Kong hidden underneath chilled fish between 2015 and 2017.

He 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 ever seizure of its kind in the UK.

Khoo was found guilty of three counts of failure to notify movement of animals and three counts of evasion of a prohibition or restriction on the export of goods at Southwark Crown Court yesterday.

The Crown Prosecution Service said he smuggled more than five million elvers over a two-year period with an estimated retail value of more than £53million in the Far East.

A picture released by the National Crime Agency (NCA) shows him holding two gold bars.

NCA senior investigating officer Ian Truby said: “The entire operation run by Khoo to trade in these critically endangered animals was illegal from start to finish, and there is no doubt his sole motivation was money.

“The profits to be made from illegally smuggling live eels to Hong Kong and the Far East are significant.”

Khoo, from Chessington in Surrey, kept the live eels imported from countries within the European Union in a barn in Gloucestershire, before repackaging them to be exported for sale on the East Asian black market.

He will be sentenced on Mar 6.