German National Arrested for Smuggling Coral from the Philippines

The U.S. Department of Justice reports in its press release (quotation, not an independent finding): “WASHINGTON—Gunther Wenzek, a German national, was arraigned today in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., on a nine count indictment charging him with three felony counts of smuggling protected coral into the United States port of Portland, Ore., three felony counts of violating the Lacey Act and three misdemeanor charges of violating the Endangered Species Act, the Justice Department announced. Wenzek appeared today before U.S. Magistrate Judge T. Rawles Jones, Jr. of the Eastern District of Virginia. A grand jury in Portland, Ore. indicted Wenzek in July 2008. The indictment had been sealed pending Wenzek’s scheduled appearance at the Global Pet Expo in Orlando, Fla., this week. Law enforcement officials arrested Wenzek Wednesday night as he entered the United States at Dulles airport outside of Washington, D.C., en route to the pet exposition. According to the indictment, Wenzek owns a company named CoraPet, based in Essen, Germany, and has sold various coral products to retailers in the United States. An investigation was launched in 2007 after Wenzek tried to ship a container loaded with fragments of endangered coral from reefs off the Philippine coast to Portland. After this initial shipment, agents subsequently seized two full containers of endangered coral shipped by Wenzek to a customer in Portland. These two shipments made up a total of over 40 tons of coral. The corals seized have been identified as corals from the scientific order Scleractinia, genera Porites, Acropora, and Pocillopora, common to Philippine reefs. Due to the threat of extinction, stony corals”