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A Tanzanian judge has sentenced a Chinese businesswoman nicknamed “ivory queen” to 15 years in jail after she was convicted of smuggling about 800 elephant tusks.
Yang Fenlan, 69, was accused of operating one of Africa’s biggest ivory-smuggling rings, responsible for smuggling $2.5m (£1.9m) worth of tusks from some 400 elephants between 2000 and 2014 from Tanzania to the Far East. Two Tanzanian men were also found guilty of involvement in the ring and jailed for 15 years.
The court in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s main city, has ordered Yang’s property to be repossessed.
She had been under investigation for more than a year when she was arrested in 2015, following a high-speed car chase.
At the time of her arrest, Yang was a prominent businesswoman, operating a Chinese restaurant as well as an investment company in Dar es Salaam. Fluent in Swahili, she had lived and worked in Tanzania since the 1970s, and had served as vice-president of the China-Africa Business Council of Tanzania.
Environmental campaigners welcomed the arrest because she was seen as playing a pivotal role in the illegal ivory trade. Most arrests tend to involve minor players. The PAMS Foundation, a conservation group supporting Tanzanian efforts to curb wildlife crime, says the conviction Tuesday of Yang Fenglan shows that Tanzanian authorities are serious about cracking down on trafficking.
The case against Yang, who was arrested in 2015, was viewed as a major test of Africa-wide efforts to hold key trafficking figures accountable for the mass killing of elephants to supply ivory to illegal markets, including in China.
In Tanzania alone, the elephant population declined by 60 percent to 43,000 between 2009 and 2014, according to the government.
