Kenyan authorities on Friday impounded 1.4 tonnes of ivory, among the largest seizures in recent months, at the country’s main airport in the capital Nairobi. The tusks were in 14 metallic boxes labelled with a Nigerian addressee and were found abandoned in the imported cargo room of Nairobi’s international airport. “We highly suspect this is a major syndicate and collusion between clearing agents here at the airport,” Eunice Kihiko, the deputy airport police commander, told reporters.
“The fact that this cargo was found at the import section and not export section is enough to show that something unusual was being done here,” she said. No arrests were made. Police were investigating the origin of the cargo which also bore Nairobi addresses of the embassies of Papua New Guinea and Brunei, which do not exist on the foreign missions list on Kenya’s foreign ministry website. “You can see they have labelled it to look like the ivory tusks were being transported from two embassies here in Nairobi, but we highly doubt that.
This is just a way of concealing the truth,” said Joseph Ngisa, the Criminal Investigation Department chief at the airport. Several ivory smugglers have been arrested at the Nairobi airport, a major regional hub, and last year authorities seized two tonnes of ivory and five rhino horns there.
