Beijing prosecutors have filed charges against an ivory smuggler, his brother and two people who bought the 100 kilograms of ivory the smuggler had snuck into China.
The Xicheng district procuratorate has charged the four men with purchasing, selling and transporting products made from rare and endangered wild animals, specifically Asian and African elephants, the Beijing Times reported Tuesday.
The 100 kilograms of ivory products involved are worth over 26 million yuan ($3.9 million), according to the report.
Wang Zhaohua, the procurator in charge of the case, told the Beijing Times that one of the suspects surnamed Zhao is accused of smuggling ivory from Japan and transporting it to Weihai, East China's Shandong Province via Hong Kong and Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province.
Zhao received 8 million yuan from a suspect surnamed Yin, who later sold the ivory to an ivory processor surnamed Fang for 8,500 yuan per kilo in May 2015.
Yin and Fang were caught red-handed while weighing ivory in a farmyard in the capital's Daxing district on the evening of May 21, 2015.
Zhao's brother was also charged with related crimes.
China has forbidden the import of ivory and ivory products acquired before the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora took effect in 1975 between March 20, 2016, to December 31, 2019, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Legal ivory can only come from two sources: items imported before the country joined the convention in 1981, and 62 tons of ivory bought from four African countries in 2008, as permitted by the convention.
