Customs officers have prevented an attempt to illegally export steppe antelope horns abroad.
According to the press service of the State Revenue Committee, at the customs post "MCPP-Khorgos" in the Zhetysu region, during a border control check, a citizen of Kazakhstan was found to be in possession of 112 saiga horns.
"Liability for this act is provided for under Article 339-1 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan 'Illegal extraction, destruction of saiga, as well as acquisition, storage, sale, import, export, forwarding, transportation of illegally obtained saiga or its derivatives, including horns'", the statement reads.
Meanwhile, the department reported that since April last year, at the Khorgos customs post, authorised bodies have identified 800 cases of legislation violations, reviewed 136 administrative cases, and collected fines totalling more than 40.5 million tenge.
Recall that earlier it was reported that in the first 4 months of this year, 15,200 metres of fishing nets, 9 tonnes of fish and fish products, around 3.5 thousand saiga horns, 135 units of hunting weapons, and 81 cubic metres of illegally harvested timber were seized from illegal circulation.
Furthermore, at the beginning of this month in the Zhetysu region, a local resident was detained who was storing saiga horns valued at 1.2 billion tenge in his attic.
And in March, the Border Service Department of the National Security Committee of the Zhetysu region detained three citizens of Kazakhstan in the border zone while they were attempting to export 1,382 saiga horns. The damage to the state was then estimated at more than 3.5 billion tenge. Incidentally, according to our data, one horn on the black market is worth about $2,000.