The day of the arrest, a Cambodian wildlife official at the CITES conference assured National Geographic that illicit monkey trading “doesn’t happen” in his country.
Panama City, PanamaU.S. authorities arrested a top Cambodian wildlife official yesterday on his way to a global wildlife trade summit in Panama. He was detained in New York at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Masphal Kry, 46, is alleged to be part of an international primate smuggling ring that has sold thousands of wild long-tailed macaques, an endangered animal, to research facilities in the United States, representing them as captive bred. Allegations against Kry include accepting bribes and personally delivering wild-caught monkeys to a Cambodian facility that passed the animals off as bred in captivity.
Kry is a deputy director at the Cambodian Forestry Administration, within the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Omaliss Keo, 58, the director general of the forestry administration was