Vietnam

Articles on Illicit Wildlife Trading in Southeast Asia

A Trans-border Wildlife Trade Network Unmasked - Part I

Author: Quoc Dzung, Tien Phong Newspaper, Hanoi, Vietnam
Unofficial translation by Do Oanh, Nguyen Thu Trang, Vu Thi Kim Oanh

Located in a remote place near the Ka Tum border gate with Cambodia, in Vietnam’s southwestern Tay Ninh province, the wildlife breeding farm owned by Tan Hoi Dong Co., Ltd. is well known in Vietnam as one of the first farms in Vietnam to obtain CITES¹ certification. But most people not know that it is also an essential transit site for the most sophisticated and largest trans-border wildlife trafficking network in Vietnam up to now. This network involves forged CITES permits from Lao, while the macaques are actually being caught in Cambodia, which has weak wildlife protection enforcement.

According to descriptions in some Vietnamese newspapers, the Tan Hoi Dong’s wildlife farm applies modern technology and scientific processes in their efforts to raise and breed snakes, turtles, and especially monkeys for use in medical testing and research of vaccines.

There has been widespread news on the farm after the chairman of an American biological company said in a June 1, 2007 report that a group of specialists would go to the Ka Tum border gate to inspect the wildlife farm of Tan Hoi Dong Co.

Unfortunately, as this series of articles will document, the Tan Hoi Dong Co. and its associates have long used false documents to import wild animals using their breeding program as a cover for allegedly illegal imports.

Recently, many significant illegal wildlife trading cases have been stopped in Vietnam.² However, until now there has been no evidence of violations of Forest Protection Laws involving officials in the FPD and the Vietnamese CITES Authority – agencies that the Government and people trust to defend forests and conserve endangered species.

If the evidence in this article is true, an official of a Hanoi-based international conservation organization considers this a case of government malfeasance.

Mr. Tran Quy, Director of Sino-Viet Border Trading Joint Stock Company (abbreviated as Sino-Viet or Trung Viet) warns that if the Macaca fascicularis is not protected and captively bred as soon as possible, Vietnam will no longer have this species for use in biological technology. Mr. Tran Quy says Vietnam’s export of long-tailed macaques ranks third all over the world. According to information from an email discussion forum on conservation sponsored by the United Nations Development Program, Vietnam exported 2,700 and 4,300 long-tailed macaques to the U.S market in 2004 and 2005, respectively.

“During recent years, the Government prohibited exploitation of wild long-tailed macaques from within Vietnam’s territory”, said Mr. Do Quang Tung, director of Vietnam’s CITES Office in a meeting with a team of journalists on July 23rd at the Hanoi–based FPD bureau.

So, if wild macaques in Vietnam are protected, the wild macaques exported from Vietnam might be captured from other countries.

According to the export permits issued in 2003, 2004, and 2005, provided by FPD officials, all long tailed macaques exported to a Chinese company by Trung Viet have been verified to be wild, not bred in captivity. Even the Macaca fasciculari, exported by Trung Viet Company since 2006, are all wild, too (this problem will be covered in other investigative reports).

The question is how they are caught and transported, and whether this is done legally or illegally.

Dr. Nguyen Xuan Binh, Vice Director of the Regional Veterinary Centre VI (RAHO-6), says that export of long-tailed macaques has occurred for over 10 years. The only two companies in this business are the famous Primate Breeding & Development Joint Venture (NAFOVANNY) and Tan Hoi Dong Co., with which the U.S Primate Products Corp. is looking for cooperation opportunities.

NAFOVANNY is reported to be the world’s biggest long-tailed macaque exporting company, with about 8,000 – 9,000 individuals exported per year over its 14-year history. Its only competitor is Tan Hoi Dong Co., a close affiliate of Trung Viet.

In many cases, Mr. Tran Quy readily reveals the real connection between Trung Viet and Tan Hoi Dong Co.

One special way he uses to convey the relationship is that he personally signs his name on a contract with his partner as the Director of Tan Hoi Dong company while, at the same time, he is still the Director of Trung Viet. So he is the director of both companies.

Probably through that special connection, Tan Hoi Dong quickly became a partner of Primate Products Inc immediately after it was established in 2005. The joint venture has the potential to overtake the powerful NAFOVANNY. An $8 million stem cell research laboratory, with long-tailed macaques provided by Tan Hoi Dong, will be built at the foot of Ba Den Mountain in Tay Ninh Province. If this project is successful, it will become a leading biotechnology facility not only in Vietnam, but also throughout the region.

Captivated by potentially lucrative profits, such as $100-800 return per macaque, Tran Quy has made serious mistakes. Prior to this report, these mistakes have been hidden from everyone but Tran Quy, his allies, and his anonymous supporters in the government agencies.

Since 2003, after leaving his job in the Ministry of Public Security, he has planned to build the largest macaque breeding farm in Cat Ba National Park, in the north of Vietnam, in order to compete with the powerful Company NAFOVANNY, operating in the south of Vietnam for 10 years but majority-owned by VANNY, a Hong Kong company.

I have been following Mr. Quy’s career ever since. His plan to build a breeding farm has advanced since it got strong support from the director of the Hanoi-based Institute of Ecological and Biological Resources (IEBR). IEBR is one of the three scientific authorities of CITES in Vietnam.

 Mr. Quy’s breeding farm plan was also approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). The company was allowed to import 5,000 long-tailed macaques from Laos.³

The project almost received approval by the People’s Committee of northern coastal Hai Phong City, but  it was eventually blocked by strong opposition from environmentalists. This was because Cat Ba National Park was being proposed to UNESCO to be named as a World Biosphere Reserve.⁴  Thus, the plan was considered to be unrealistic.

At the time, I strongly believe Tran Quy would give up that unrealistic and costly plan. So I didn’t try to meet him as intended. Moreover, he was a busy man and I often failed to meet him despite my best efforts.

I also abandoned my attempts to find out why the leader of IEBR - one of the biggest zoological and botanical research bases in Vietnam - supported the project, which would ruin the national park title of Cat Ba (near the World’s Natural Heritage Site of Ha Long Bay). This question is worthy of more investigation.

Fortunately for Tran Quy, the permit of MARD allowed Trung Viet to sell all 5,000 imported macaques to NAFOVANNY. If there had not been such a permit,⁵ Trung Viet would not have known how to deal with such alien invasive animals. Besides, it is said that doing business with NAFOVANNY is the best way for Trung Viet to run its traffic in the long term as 40 percent of NAFOVANNY’s shares belong to the Vietnam Forest Corp. (NAFO), an enterprise governed by MARD.

In other words, the failure of the Cat Ba project brought Trung Viet a reason to sell macaques imported through Cau Treo Border Gate to the company in the South. And it is NAFOVANNY which has been the only large-scale trading partner of Trung Viet in macaques transaction since then.

However, no one knows the exact nature of the relationship between Trung Viet and NAFOVANNY. It is rumored their businesses depend on one another. Trung Viet can exploit the extremely cheep macaque resources while NAFOVANNY can easily reach out to the foreign market.

Such a symbiotic strategy seems to be kept obscured. It is as if they were totally independent from each other. The Board of NAFOVANNY agreed to buy macaques from Trung Viet based on the suggestion of MARD officials, according to an official from NAFOVANNY in a meeting on 14 July, 2007 at its office in Dong Nai Province. However, during the transaction, NAFOVANNY failed to receive any permit from Laos – the alleged exporting country. “We would feel secure if we have the certificate of origin,” said Mr. Cao Van Tien, NAFOVANNY’s Executive Director. The company even sent staff to Hanoi to meet with FPD officials. Strenuous efforts eventually produced some documents. NAFOVANNY claims they did not know these documents are counterfeit.

In October of 2004, Trung Viet changed the wildlife import location to a new area, 1,500 km south of the Cau Treo Border Gate, bordering Laos’s Bolikhamxay Province. The new import site is Ka Tum Border Gate in the southern Tay Ninh Province, adjacent to Cambodia’s Kompong Cham Province. There were two main reasons for this move:

First, since its establishment, Trung Viet has in fact imported the macaques from Cambodia, not Laos.

Second, until last year, the main customer of Trung Viet had been NAFOVANNY -- the company situated in the southern Dong Nai Province, just 120 km far from the border of Tay Ninh Province. Currently, it is difficult to explain why NAFOVANNY wants to buy long-tailed macaques from Cambodia, although this will be the subject of a future in-depth investigation.

Mr. Tran Van Trong, Vice Director of Ka Tum Border Gate Custom Department says Trung Viet’s network imported 15,850 macaques through Ka Tum Border Gate during the years of 2005 and 2006.

Even in their dreams, NAFOVANNY could never import so many macaques. Each year, the company imports less than 1,000 macaques directly from Cambodia with a price of US$300 per head, says Mr. Cao Van Tien, executive director of NAFOVANNY.⁶ According to Dr Nguyen Xuan Binh, NAFOVANNY has requested quarantine procedures for importing only 400 macaques from Cambodia in the first half of 2007. It is also interesting that Trung Viet’s network didn’t apply to import monkeys at this time, so they did not have to deal with quarantine procedures.

In order to find the secret that enables Trung Viet to import macaques, we attempted to acquire the original files concerning their import. Under the Vietnamese Press Law, reporters are empowered to require relevant authorities to provide concerned information or documents, which are not listed as secret records stipulated by Government. Just as we were told at the Cau Treo Border Gate (in Ha Tinh Province, 400 km south of Hanoi), other agencies also informed us that all macaques imported by Trung Viet and its network were approved by permits from Laos.

However, none of the government agencies would provide or show us copies of the export permits from Laos’ government agencies. The Vietnamese authorities repeatedly passed the buck, refused to answer or gave conflicting responses to our queries, or were simply absent from their offices.

At RAHO-6 on 10th July, 2007, Vice Director Dr Binh said he was not in charge of wildlife quarantine management for import/export. He put the responsibility on the Director, Mr. Dong Manh Hoa. However, Mr. Hoa was on a business trip to Hanoi that day. Mr. Binh, with sympathy, provided some documents related to quarantine work even though he was not responsible for quarantine.

However, when we mentioned the permits from Lao authorities, he refused stridently and said that he would need directives from his managers for giving out those papers. We contacted the Hanoi-based National Veterinary Department (NVD) via telephone in the afternoon of the same day, and they approved our request. However, when Dr Binh, in Ho Chi Minh City, called, the same person from NVD refused to confirm his prior approval.
 
We went to the Tay Ninh Customs Department and asked Mr. Nguyen Van Don, Head of Administration, for copies of permits from Laos. Mr. Don said those documents would be available at the Ka Tum Border Gate Customs Department.

Mr. Tran Van Trong, Vice Director of Ka Tum Border Gate Customs Department, said his Department didn’t have those kind of documents. “We only require the permits from the CITES Authority in Vietnam when examining the import application forms of Trung Viet and Phat Thinh [another company affiliated with Trung Viet]”. However, he immediately changed his rationale, saying he would need approval from the Provincial Customs Department to release the required documents.

Moving up the bureaucracy, we made an appointment with MARD. We also contacted FPD in Hanoi. We finally had two meetings by the end of July, 2007 with the management board of FPD and Vietnam’s CITES Management Authority.

In these meetings, we met Mr. Nguyen Huu Dung (Vice Director of  the FPD), Mr. Do Quang Tung (Manager of Vietnam’s CITES Authority), Mr. Nguyen Phi Truyen (Head of the Special Forces), and Ms Ha Tuyet Nga (Program Officer of Vietnam’s CITES Authority, in charge of investigation, policy, and foreign affairs). They promised to provide us with copies of permits from the Lao CITES Authority.

This promise was not kept. No copy of any permit has been sent by these agencies up to now.

Tran Quy and Mr. Kien, the director of a corporation said to be a Trung Viet shareholder, also promised to show us permits from Laos. In the end, everyone we contacted failed to provide the Lao permits.

Because we needed copies of the permits from Laos, and in order to come to understand what really happens at the  Tan Hoi Dong macaque farm, we began to hunt for Mr. Nguyen Hong Xuan. He is the Director of Tan Chau – Duong Minh Chau Interdistrict Forest Department, which is directly responsible for managing the Tan Hoi Dong wildlife farm.

After many phone calls during nearly two months of waiting, on September 10th, the FPD finally provided us with copies of the relevant permits. The documents were issued by a Lao government agency that was not the Laotian CITES Authority. The permit was issued before Laos joined CITES on May 30th, 2004.

(Part II - Hunting Down)

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