A court sitted in Tanzania has on Tuesday sentenced a prominent Chinese business woman known as the “Ivory Queen” to 15 years in prison for smuggling the tusks of more than 350 elephants to Asia.
Yang Feng Glan “ivory queen” was charged in October 2015 along with two Tanzanian men for smuggling 860 pieces of ivory between year 2000 and 2004. These ivory was reported to worth about 13 billion shillings ($5.6 million). However, She denied the charges.
Reports have it that 69 years old Yang, had lived in Tanzania since the 1970s and was at one point secretary-general of the Tanzania China-Africa Business Council. She has a good command of the Swahili language, she also owns a popular Chinese restaurant in Dar es Salaam.
Kisutu Court Magistrate Huruma Shaidi sentenced Yang, Salivius Matembo and Manase Philemon to 15 years in prison on convictions of leading an organised criminal gang. Shaidi also ordered them to either pay twice the market value of the elephant tusks or face another two years in prison.
Demand for ivory from Asian countries such as China and Vietnam, where it is turned into jewels and ornaments, has led to a surge in poaching across Africa.
According to a census carried out by a conservation group in 2015, Tanzania’s elephant population drastically reduced from 110,000 in 2009 to little more than 43,000 in 2014. The reductiion was blamed on industrial scale poaching.