Eight men convicted in French court for trafficking rhino horn and ivory
Eight men convicted in French court for trafficking rhino horn and ivory
Kim Willshire and Rory Carroll, The Guardian
September 8, 2021
A French court has convicted eight men including members of an Irish crime
gang for trafficking rhino horn and ivory between Europe and east Asia.
Four men – three Irish and one English – said to be members of the
Rathkeale Rovers gang were given prison terms, though two were spared jail
as the sentences were suspended.
The court also imposed a total of €316,000 (£270,000) in fines.
Three of the men were not present at the special court in Rennes in west
France and are the subject of international arrest warrants.
Charlotte Nithart, president of the Robin des Bois (Robin Hood)
environmental group, welcomed the judgment she said was “educational and
dissuasive … for all those who engage in wildlife trafficking and speculate
on species threatened with extinction”.
“Before trafficking, there is poaching which causes social and
environmental devastation,” she said after Wednesday’s verdict.
French prosecutors began investigating after police stopped a BMW car in a
random motorway traffic inspection in September 2015 and found four
uncertified elephant tusks and €32,800 in cash.
The occupants of the car, some of whom claimed they were antique dealers,
were later found to be part of an international network of rhino horn and
ivory traffickers including several of Chinese and Vietnamese origin.
Police said the Irish and English suspects were members of the Rathkeale
Rovers, a criminal clan named after a town outside Limerick in southern
Ireland. Rooted in the Travelling community, gang members have been linked
to a bewildering range of scams across Europe, the Americas, Africa and
Australia.
Detectives discovered the smugglers had two workshops in France to
transform ivory and rhino horn into powder or flakes and other objects that
were then exported to Vietnam and China to be used in traditional medicine.
One large horn weighing nearly 15kg was seized during the investigation.
Robin des Bois said it would have been worth around €13m in exported
products once processed.
Robin des Bois alleged that auction houses in Cannes, Toulouse and Le Puy
had facilitated the export of tusks to Vietnam and China.
The Rathkeale Rovers were the target of a joint investigation by European
police in 2010 that led to 31 people being arrested, including for the
theft of rhino horns, the Europol police agency says on its website.
The gang has traded in illicit antiques, cigarettes, electrical goods,
vintage cars and fake coronavirus test certificates.
It has tarmacking scams that con customers and contractors, earning
nicknames in several languages: “asfaltaris Irlandese” in Italy,
“teerkolonne” in Germany and “les faux bitumeurs” in France. The tarmackers
have also reportedly operated in South America, Mexico, the US and South
Africa.
Europol warned in February that members of the Rathkeale Rovers were using
a mobile phone app to falsify coronavirus test results which were then sold
to travellers.
In 2017 a federal court in Miami sentenced Michael Hegarty, regarded as a
senior member of the gang, to 18 months in prison for smuggling a libation
cup – a drinking vessel carved from rhino horn – from the US to England.