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European authorities have arrested 27 suspects in an alleged unlawful eel operation following a two-year investigation that prompted searches in France, Spain, Belgium and Poland, Spain’s Civil Guard mentioned this week.
The Civil Guard, in a joint operation with the French Nationwide Gendarmerie, Europol and the European Anti-Fraud Workplace, seized 1½ tons of reside critically endangered eels and several other extra tons of frozen eels that had gone by means of no meals security checks.
The recovered reside eels have been returned to their “pure surroundings to protect (their) survival,” the Civil Guard mentioned of the fish thought-about endangered by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature.
The suspects are accused of operating a felony operation to smuggle the eels into China, the place it’s a “extremely valued product,” in accordance with the Civil Guard.
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The eels can go for greater than $5,000 per kilogram in some Asian nations, “which is why, for years, felony teams and organizations devoted to concealing batches of reside eels and ship them to clients in Asia,” the Civil Guard mentioned through a translation.
Belongings price greater than 2 million euros have been additionally seized from the alleged felony group.
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As a result of the eels are endangered, commerce throughout the European Union is “topic to fishing and distribution quotas, however its export outdoors the EU is completely prohibited,” the Civil Guard mentioned.
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