R17.3 million Worth Of Rhino Horn Seized During An Operation In Centurion, Near Pretoria

They arrived at a secure complex where they first found a car with a hidden compartment used for horns, microchip scanners, a bandsaw and hi-tech scales. Two horns were in the car. The following day, an eagleeyed policeman noticed that soil in the garden had been disturbed, and six rhino horns wrapped in clingfilm were unearthed.

 One of the horns was so fresh, it was later found to have been hacked from a rhino just a few days earlier.

 The details of Operation Whisper, which bust the rhino-poaching syndicate, were revealed in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Friday.

 Colonel Gerhard Vermeulen of the SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory told how he had arrived at the crime scene to find two rhino horns in a car.

 They had been stashed in a hidden compartment, between the rear seat and the boot.

“If you had opened the boot you wouldn’t have been able to see it,” said Vermeulen.

 In the dock was Vietnamese citizen Gulit Chu Duc, 23, who was arrested on May 31 last year at the Centurion complex.

 He has pleaded guilty to two charges related to the transportation and possession of rhino horns.

 His arrest was the culmination of Operation Whisper, during which undercover SAPS members had sold two rhino horns in KwaZulu-Natal and then followed the contraband to Gauteng.

 In a statement, Chu Duc said he had picked up a parcel from a person in Bruma, Joburg, and placed the parcel in his car.

 Vermeulen told the court that in the garage he also found a rhino horn in a bandsaw.

“It appeared to me that someone was in the process of cutting up the horn,” he said.

 On the floor were two microchip scanners.

 He believed the scanners were used to locate microchips left in the horns.

 The following day when Vermeulen searched the garden, he found six more horns.

 The horns were sent for DNA testing and compared to a genetic rhino database. They got a match on one of them.

 The horn belonged to a male rhino poached in the Hluhluwe Umfolozi game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal on the same day as the Centurion bust.

 The animal had been killed a few days earlier.

 A fingerprint matching Chu Duc was found on some of the plastic wrapped around the horn, said Vermeulen.

 Advocate Mannie Witz said his client was not part of a syndicate – “What he is, is the most dispensable person in the world.”

He claimed the vehicle Chu Duc was driving was registered to the Centurion complex’s landlord, who also owned a game farm in Klerksdorp, where legal rhino hunts were conducted.

 Witz said there were legal permits to hunt rhinos.

 Vermeulen said no permits were found relating to the eight seized horns.

“If these horns were legally hunted, why would they need to transport the horn in a secret compartment or hide them in the garden?” he asked.

 Chu Duc’s sentencing hearing will continue on December 6. THE GOVERNMENT’S plan to set up a national fund it would manage to combat rhino poaching has been blasted by the non-governmental sector, which fears the fund will be mismanaged.

 The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has been forging ahead with the establishment of the National Rhino Fund. It claims this will allow donors to be sure their money is going to anti-poaching projects.

 The idea behind the fund is that the government will look at projects that are underfunded and channel the money to them. It also will establish a separate DEA registry dealing with anti-poaching groups.

 However, at a meeting with NGOs, non-profit organisations, the private sector and the public in Kempton Park last week, the DEA came under fire.

 The major concerns raised included government involvement in the non-governmental sector and a potential mismanagement of funds.

“It’s a clear and absolute conflict of interest,” said Katheryn Kure, director of the eThekwini Community Foundation. She also questioned how the government could expect to raise funds through NGOs and why there was a need for a separate registry.

“It’s a needless duplication within the government,” Kure said. Her organisation was already registered with the Department of Social Development and was accountable to the Department of Justice, the Master of the High Court and Sars, with all finances available to the public on demand.

“When the government says we want to ring-fence your money and we’ll decide how it’s spent, I’m sceptical,” said another concerned person.

 Deputy director-general in the DEA Fundisile Mkenti admitted there was distrust in the government’s management of funds but said money would be used responsibly. “The money we get is not for politics; it’s for rhino poaching.”

Sheelagh Antrobus, of Project Rhino KZN, was worried that bigger, more politically connected groups would get most of the funding while smaller ones would get the leftovers. “I’m very concerned that it is going to be like lion cubs at a kill,” she said.

 Mkenti replied: “We don’t see competition. You help us by telling us who is funding you… give us those and we’ll avoid them.”

Another issue was whether the government would support groups opposed to legalising the rhino horn trade, because the DEA had a pro-trade stance.

“We don’t care, that’s your mandate… we won’t stop you,” said Mkenti.

 By:
 The Star