Singapore: man jailed for smuggling 84 birds

He is fined $13,000 in addition to one-day jail term
Elena Chong Straits Times 3 Mar 11;

A FISH farm operator who smuggled animals into Singapore waters was yesterday jailed for a day and fined a total of $13,000.

Chan Keng Hee, 49, pleaded guilty to two charges of illegally bringing in 84 birds and a domestic ferret by sea on Oct 15 last year. A third charge of bringing in a radiated tortoise was taken into consideration.

Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) prosecutor Yap Teck Chuan told a Community Court that just before 6am that day, Police Coast Guard officers spotted Chan's fishing vessel alongside a Malaysian boat in the waters off Lim Chu Kang, and saw a pair of styrofoam boxes being transferred onto his vessel.

Upon checking the boxes, officers found 60 mata puteh birds, 18 red-whiskered bulbuls, five magpie robins, an Asian fairy bluebird, the ferret and the tortoise.

The court heard that Chan, a licensed fish-culture farm operator, received a call the day before from a Malaysian named 'Yuchai' about ferrying animals and birds from international waters into Singapore.

Yuchai called him again the next day, telling him that the Malaysian boat had arrived at the meeting place in international waters, and that he was to go there to receive the 'goods'.

The court heard that Chan had paid the Malaysian boatman RM5,000 (S$2,090).

Pressing for a deterrent sentence, AVA's Mr Yap said that although no reported cases of bird flu have surfaced in Malaysian poultry farms since the last outbreak in 2007, the risk remained because the birds could have come into contact with infected birds and poultry, and could carry the virus.

He added that ferrets are known carriers of rabies, which Singapore has been free of since 1953; and with Singapore being highly urbanised, public safety would be compromised if rabies was reintroduced here.

Mr Yap also noted that Chan had abused his farm operator's licence by using his boat for smuggling.

Chan could have been fined up to $10,000 and/or jailed for up to a year on each charge.