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Tran Van Lap (R) at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City on July 30. |
A Ho Chi Minh City appeals court Friday handed down a three-year jail term to a Hanoian for smuggling rhinoceros horns from South Africa into Vietnam in 2008.
According to the indictment, Tran Van Lap, 50, was found transporting five horns weighing 17,66 kilograms, without a license, at Tan Son Nhat Airport on January 3, 2008.
He told police he had gone to South Africa, on someone's advice, to hunt rhinos in May, 2007.
While there, he hunted down two white rhinos worth a total of US$20,000.
When questioned, the man said he took two pairs of horns which were licensed for export by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Limpopo - the northernmost province of South Africa on October 10 the same year.
Lap bought another horn for $2,000 and brought this, along with the other four, into the country without declaring them at Vietnamese customs. A HCMC People's Procuracy-authorized agency estimated the horns to be worth nearly VND5.4 billion ($283,464), the indictment said.
At the first trial last August, the court said there was only evidence to show that Lap had smuggled one horn and not the total five. As a result, he was sentenced to one year, one month and 20 days in prison.
The HCMC People’s Procuracy - the local prosecutor's office - opposed this sentence, however, and lodged an appeal proposing Lap receive a heavier punishment.
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