From Africa to UK high streets, via China: inside lucrative world of ivory smuggling

First there were 14 shaving bowls with a tortoiseshell inlay worth £800 each. Then came the rest - 174 nailbrush handles, carvings and assorted accessories awaiting completion in cardboard boxes with a total value of £85,000.

First there were 14 shaving bowls with a tortoiseshell inlay worth £800 each. Then came the rest - 174 nailbrush handles, carvings and assorted accessories awaiting completion in cardboard boxes with a total value of £85,000.

It may sound like the inventory of a high-class male grooming supplier, but these items represent part of the stockpile that is fuelling Britain's latest thriving trade in an illegal substance - ivory.

The haul was discovered this week by police, customs officers and conservation workers in co-ordinated raids on three London antique shops and a suspected ivory "factory" near Stroud in Gloucestershire.

The seizure, which followed months of painstaking intelligence gathering by police and conservationists, represented the largest discovery of suspected illegal ivory bound for the domestic British market.

Campaigners say the haul represents the tip of the iceberg in an increasingly lucrative criminal industry worth at least £5m a year, one which stretches from antique dealers in central London to Chinese traders in poached ivory targeting Britain through internet auction sites.

Some 25 years after a global ban was imposed on the selling of "new" ivory, there are fears that an upsurge in demand will lead to increased poaching of elephants in Africa.

Crawford Allen, enforcement co-ordinator for Traffic, the organisation which monitors the international illegal wildlife trade, said: "There is growing evidence that despite the ban on illegal ivory, there is a supply chain that leads from Africa to Europe to meet demand for ivory products. We are seeing new ivory items being manufactured or partially manufactured and smuggled into the UK. The end result is that it helps to fuel demand for illegal tusks. It is a worldwide trade but Britain is an attractive, market for high-class, high-quality items."

Investigators have found that the supply of ivory is largely from central and east Africa, where raw tusks can be found openly for sale. Much of the new ivory finds its way to China, where a booming economy is fuelling demand for the traditional luxury material to be turned into items such as figurines and name stamps.

To meet the demand for ivory, experts estimate that the equivalent of the tusks from 12,200 elephants must be found every year either from legal stockpiles or illegal poaching, potentially imperilling the remaining wild elephant population.

The African elephant population has fallen from three million 50 years ago to fewer than 500,000, while there are now as few as 35,000 Asian elephants in the wild.

Scotland Yard, whose wildlife crime unit led this week's raids, declined to identify the three central London antiques dealers or the nationalities of the suspects involved.

Campaigners believe a quietly successful illegal ivory market in Britain centred on the antiques and luxury goods industry is being operated by criminal networks tricking reputable vendors with fake antique ivory or using corrupt retailers to sell new ivory.

Under British law, any ivory made between 1947 and 1989 must have a government certificate to prove its "antique" status. Virtually all ivory items made after 1989, when the global ban started, are illegal.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) says Britain is now a major transit point for ivory to be smuggled to America. It singled out London antiques markets as a destination for illegal ivory.

Jenny Hawley, Ifaw's wildlife trade campaigner, said: "Ninety nine per cent of antique dealers would be horrified if they learnt they were selling new ivory. The problem is that there is an element of organised crime that is supplying the raw product and making huge returns out of it."

While a law now exists to tackle the problem, conservationists criticised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) yesterday for failing to produce secondary legislation granting police powers to enforce it. Under current rules, police cannot arrest suspected ivory traffickers unless they obstruct a search and officers can only "invite" suspects to make a statement prior to pressing charges.

David Cowdrey, director of wildlife trading for the WWF, said: "We have a thriving market in illegal ivory in this country. What gets seized is on the tip of the iceberg. Yet all the police can do is politely ask a suspect if they would like to attend the station for an interview.

"The Government really has to improve its performance on this issue. At the moment the handcuffs are not on the criminals but the police."

Defra admitted that it needed to pass secondary legislation to allow prosecutions but said it was consulting on the issue and would "act as soon as possible".

In the meantime, traders in suspected illegal ivory are finding new ways of reaching lucrative Western markets.

One Shanghai vendor offering an "ancient ivory elephant" on eBay's UK site refused to provide an assurance that the item would have a valid export licence when contacted yesterday by The Independent. Another claimed that new ivory could be sold legally.

A spokeswoman for eBay said the auction site banned the sale of new ivory and removed all illegal items from its site.