Eight people were charged by federal prosecutors with trafficking endangered monkeys. One of them was a Cambodian wildlife official, who was traveling to the United States for a conference about protecting endangered species.
A colleague from the country’s wildlife agency, six others connected to a Hong Kong company and a few other people were involved in breeding long-tailed macaques for academic and scientific research and supplying them to Texas and Florida labs. The group was accused of illegally buying wild macaques from their breeding operations to support the business.
The long-tailed macaques are sometimes called crab-eating macaques. Special permits are required to bring the animals into the United States.
Masphal Kry, deputy director of Wildlife and Biodiversity at Cambodia’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, has been arrested by John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Kry, 46, was in Panama to attend an international conference on regulating trade of endangered species. A U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing investigations.
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Omaliss Ko, 58 is the director general of the Southeast Asian country’s Forestry Administration. She is also facing eight counts of indictment along with six Vanny employees. Officials did not say whether Kry or any other Vanny employees had been taken into custody. Each of them could spend up to 145 years behind bars.
Juan Antonio Gonzalez, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida stated that the macaque was already listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. We must end the illegal taking of macaques from their natural habitats to keep them in labs. Responsible conservation should not be sacrificed for greed.
On July 20, 2022, long-tailed macaques were pictured outside Singapore’s Thomson Nature Park. Eight people were accused of smuggling endangered monkeys to breed. They were accused of illegally buying wild long-tailed macaques to run their business. (Then Chih Wey/Xinhua via Getty Images).
The indictment states that Vanny Resources Holdings founder James Man Sang Lau (64), and Vanny Resources Holdings general manger Dickson Lau (29), both operated from Hong Kong and conspired to purchase wild macaques to be exported to the U.S. falsely labeled as captive bred.
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Officials claim that the macaques were removed from protected areas in Cambodia and sent to breeding facilities, where they were given false export permits. In exchange for the collection of 3,000 monkeys, officials from Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries received $220 in cash.
U.S. Edward Grace, Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement Assistant.
A conference in Panama brought together delegates representing 184 countries to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It also featured a Nov. 23 discussion on threats to the species that Cambodian officials are accused of trafficking.
The longest-tailed macaque, which is almost exclusively used for laboratory research, is the most traded primate in the CITES Database. The CITES Trade Database shows that more than 600,000. were exported from 2011 to 2020 and are either born in captivity or declared to have been bred there. In 2020, almost 165,000 live specimens were shipped.
