LISBON: Portuguese authorities has brought down a criminal network that has been making lucrative profits by smuggling glass eels to Asia.
In the latest operation against the traffickers that was concluded in March but only revealed Friday, four Chinese citizens, three Spaniards and three Moroccans were arrested in Spain in an operation coordinated by the European Union’s police body.
Spain’s Civil Guard said 460 kilograms (1,014 pounds) of glass eels were seized in southern Spain with a market value of over 400 million euros ($490 million).
Authorities across the continent have been trying to tackle the smugglers who take European glass eels to Asian countries where they are raised into adults and their meat is sold expensively for the local cuisine.
Friday’s disclosure showed how the ring exported the baby eels bought in Spain through Portugal and Morocco and how the eels were concealed in suitcases or in cargo containers and sent to Hong Kong, Mainland China, South Korea and other Asian countries.
Police also seized 364 suitcases possibly used to smuggle the eels, with potential profits of 37.5 million euros, Civil Guard Coronel Jesus Galvez said during a press conference in Madrid Friday.
Because eels can’t be bred in captivity, the wriggling glass eels -or elvers- are usually fished and raised to maturity in aquaculture companies in Asia, where pollution, climate change and poaching has diminished stocks of the Japonica Anguilla species.
The trading of the European eel has been restricted since 2009 under the rules of the CITES convention for the international trade of endangered wildlife. The European Union has banned all exports outside the bloc and regulated internal sales, although an underground business has thrived in recent years.
Since the glass eel fishing season began at the end of the fall, Portugal has arrested 28 people and has seized 1 ton of glass eels in 18 raids. Hugo Alexandre Matos, director of the Portuguese authority of food security, ASAE, said several investigations remained opened.
