•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

Surabaya. Customs and excise officers at Tanjung Perak port here stopped an attempt to smuggle 200 kilograms of deer horns from Papua to China.

Authorities have identified the company Sinar Puri Kencana Surabaya as allegedly being behind the smuggling attempt.

The deer horns were packed into five cardboard boxes and covered with 234 sacks of dried grass jelly leaves. At the port, the company only declared the leaves to customs officials.

In a separate case, customs officials at the port prevented an attempt to smuggle dog-faced water snakes and several types of seashells to China.

The snakes, which were covered with dried geckos, were being shipped by a company identified as Arika Tri Tunggal, while the seashells were exported by a company listed as Bahari Agung.

The illegal shipments were uncovered during a series of raids conducted by the customs office between August and September.

“As soon as we received information that there would be a smuggling attempt, we investigated the export manifests of the containers,” Tomas Sudijanto, chief of the customs office’s investigation and law enforcement unit, said on Friday.

“We also used gamma-ray and HiCo scans to detect the presence of these illegal specimens in the container,” he said.

Based on Presidential Decree No. 43, which was passed in 1978 to ratify the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, the country is obliged to enforce all CITES regulations, including stopping the smuggling of threatened species.