Thai police arrest Boonchai Bach, alleged to be the head of Asia's biggest illegal wildlife trading networks. Boonchai Bach, a 40-year-old Thai of Vietnamese origin, was detained in a town on the border with Laos. Photo: EPA

20 January 2018 (BBC News) – Thai police have arrested a man alleged to be the head of Asia’s biggest illegal wildlife trading networks.
Boonchai Bach, a 40-year-old Thai of Vietnamese origin, was detained in a town on the border with Laos.
He faces up to four years in jail for smuggling protected animal parts like rhino horns and elephant ivory.
Animal trafficking is a lucrative black market trade. Police said the suspect was “ringleader” of a “major smuggling syndicate” operating over a decade.
He was arrested on Friday over the smuggling of 14 rhino horns worth around $1m (£700,000) from Africa to Thailand.
After tracking all the people involved in the consignment of rhino horn which was stopped last month, the police say they have enough evidence to charge him.
Boonchai Bach was known to run a business from a small border town on the Mekong River, over which illicit goods are often smuggled to Laos, says the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok.
Laos is one of the main routes through which poached animal parts from Africa and Asia are moved to buyers in Vietnam and China. [more]

Asian wildlife trafficking ‘kingpin’ Boonchai Bach arrested