A shipping container allegedly filled with illegal perlemoen left Gqeberha and was destined for the East when it was intercepted by the Hawks and brought back to South African shores.
This was one of two containers that came through the Port of Port Elizabeth in January 2018 that were later linked to a R100m perlemoen racket allegedly run by the directors of Cape Town-based seafood importer Blue Fin Marine Trading.
On Thursday, the high court in Gqeberha heard further testimony on the containers and how they were allegedly sourced for the exporting of illegal perlemoen hidden among frozen beef products.
Kai Ou Yang, Chu-Kai Chang and Blue Fin, represented by Yang’s wife, Hsien-Chu Ou Yang, are accused of attempting to illegally export about 40-tonnes of perlemoen between February 2017 and January 2018.
They have pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering.
The couple are listed as directors of the company while Chang worked as a manager at Blue Fin at the time of the alleged offences.
They arrived at court on Thursday in a black Lexus SUV with personalised number plates reading BLUFIN2.
They are represented by Michael Hulley, the Durban-based long-time lawyer of former president Jacob Zuma.
Standing in the witness box, the former operations manager at Asia Pacific Cargo, Yugen Govender, testified that his employer specialised in sourcing containers on shipping liners for companies importing and exporting goods.
He told the court he was contacted by the investigating officer, Warrant Officer Leon Eksteen of the Hawks based in Gqeberha, in March 2019 when Eksteen could no longer get hold of the company’s director.
Govender has since left the company.
When asked why communication between the Hawks and the company’s director ended,, Govender said one possible inference was that she was avoiding law enforcement.
He said Eksteen had inquired about documentation relating to two specific shipping containers.
According to invoices and packing lists read out in court by Govender, the two 40-foot refrigerated containers were sourced on January 5 2018 and January 19 2018, respectively, and were supposed to contain “frozen beef bones”.
Eksteen testified earlier this week that the containers were traced to the Port of Port Elizabeth where it was found that one was being prepared for departure, while the other was already at sea, en route to Asia.
The police, working with the ports authority, immediately intercepted the seaborne container and arranged for it to be transferred from the outgoing vessel onto a ship bound for the Durban harbour.
On searching the container, it was allegedly found to contain 158 boxes of perlemoen, each box weighing about 10kg.
Meanwhile, the other container was searched in Gqeberha and allegedly contained 745 boxes of unprocessed perlemoen, as well as 155 boxes of dried perlemoen.
In both containers, the perlemoen was hidden among boxes containing frozen animal bones.
Before Govender’s testimony on Thursday, Warrant Officer Karel Stander of the Hawks in Durban testified how he received correspondence from Eksteen and assisted in identifying the container brought to the Durban harbour by verifying the identification codes given to each shipping container.
The two containers that came through Gqeberha, along with two more found in Cape Town, one found on a truck in the Northern Cape, and two illegal perlemoen processing facilities in Cape Town, led to the recovery of about 40-tonnes of perlemoen — all allegedly linked to Blue Fin.
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