Russian experts evaluate the batch at slightly more than 2.5 million roubles, roughly US$80,000. The smugglers' profit would exceed the sum several-fold in China, if they were a success.
Customs officers came on the batch Friday last, March 19, as they were checking a Kamaz jumbo lorry owned by a Chinese-based company. Discovered in the lorry body were 768 severed bear paws, total weight 844 kg, a breathtaking stock of furs-1,550 Siberian polecat, 1,600 sable, 53 racoon, 30 fox, 155 mink and 2,180 squirrel pelts, plus 388.5 kg of dried trepangs, 1.2 kg of bear bile, 49 kg of frog fat, 50 kg of musk, and 142 deer antlers.
Trepang shellfish and bear paws are among the most sophisticated and expensive delicacies of Oriental cuisine. Of no smaller black market popularity are deer antlers and wild animal musk and bile-all precious in folk medicine.
Poachers killed 192 bears and close on a hundred thousand frogs to stock up the whole amount, say experts.
No Russian customs checkpoint has come on such a gargantuan batch of contraband within several preceding years.
The driver and forwarding agent, both Chinese nationals, are in for prison terms up to five years if Russian authorities choose to launch criminal proceedings.
