An international network of glass eels, eel fry sold at exorbitant prices in Asia on the black market, has been dismantled in France, Spain, Belgium and Poland with the arrest of 27 traffickers on Wednesday, the authorities announced on Thursday. investigators.
The European crackdown led to the arrest of four sponsors in France, where a clandestine breeding ground was discovered with contraband glass eels and equipment to store and re-oxygenate these endangered animals.
According to the investigators, the traffic was “the work of an organized gang (using) the Franco-Spanish border in an attempt to conceal its criminal activities with Asia”.
In total, nearly four tonnes of glass eels were exported fraudulently between 2021 and 2023, for an estimated profit of 1.18 million euros, according to the European investigation team.
Photo provided by the Spanish Civil Guard/AFP
French and Spanish gendarmes dump seized eels into a truck.
Some 115 agents were mobilized in France within the gendarmerie (Oclaesp and research sections of Bordeaux and Pau), the police, the Service of judicial investigations of finances (SEJF), the French Office of biodiversity and the National Brigade for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Investigations.
The investigations, launched in 2021, revealed the involvement of wholesalers, sales managers and fishermen, who harvested this regulated species outside of quotas, and uncovered illegal export channels through European airports, in particular via intermediaries. Asians living in the Paris region.
In Spain, the Guardia Civil arrested around 20 people and investigations were also carried out at facilities in Belgium and at a restocking company in Poland suspected of being a “front company” for exports to smuggling to Asia.
Photo provided by the Spanish Civil Guard/AFP
Some 200,000 euros in cash were seized, as well as 900,000 euros in miscellaneous goods, including contraband glass eels and vehicles.
The annual value of illegal trafficking in glass eels, threatened with extinction and banned from export outside the European Union since 2010, is estimated at three billion euros. They trade between 700 and 900 euros per kilo in France, where fishing is highly regulated, and up to 5,000 euros in Asia.
The smuggling of the European eel called “Anguilla anguilla” is one of the causes of the 75% drop in its population in thirty years.