Ngo Thanh Nhan, who presented a dead South African white rhino as a gift to banker Tram Be, who later lost the animal’s horn after a home theft, is in the list of Vietnamese individuals allowed to import rhinos to the country, deputy director of the CITES Management Authority of Vietnam confirmed with Tuoi Tre Monday. CITES, or Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, manages the international trade of endangered wildlife. Nhan brought the animal to Vietnam in 2006, after killing it in a legal hunt in South Africa that year, said Tung. Nhan said he handed over the dried and stuffed rhino to Be, vice chairman of the Board of Management of Sacombank, at the party to celebrate his new house in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh in 2007. Under CITES regulations, a hunter is allowed to keep the animal as a personal asset, and is banned from using it under commercial purposes. Tung said the real form under which the animal was transferred to Be is still pending police investigation.

The stuffed rhino is seen without its horn at Tram Be's villa in Tra Vinh. Photo: Thanh Nien

Be has attracted national headlines over the last week after his security guards reported to police on September 27 that the rhino horn was stolen at his villa, while he kept silent about the theft. The horn reportedly weighs about 4 kg and is valued at VND4 billion (US$191,000). CITES, which currently provides a strict ban on the trade of rhino horns, began to look into the case under suspicion that the horn had been illegally traded prior to the theft.Legal hunt Nhan addressed the media last week, saying the rhino in question was his gift to Be, and that he acquired all necessary papers to prove its legality. The man said he was invited to join a tourism and hunting trip to South Africa by a local company in 2006, where he was assisted in acquiring the license for rhino hunting. “I had to be appropriately trained to use weapons and acknowledge all of the hunting rules,” he told Tuoi Tre in the Monday interview. Nhan was allowed to kill a white rhino, but the poor animal had to be chosen by the park ranger who accompanied the hunting squad, he said. “I fired three shots to claim its life, then handed the dead animal to the hunt organizers to try and transfer it to Vietnam,” he recalled. “It’s my first and also last rhino hunt in South Africa.” CITES International prohibits the granting, exchanging, and trading of legal hunting specimens, while the act is permitted by CITES Vietnam. “I have no idea about CITES International regulations,” he admitted. More than 100 Vietnamese nationals have so far been licensed to import rhinos, and the country also possesses the largest number of applicants to be able to go for a hunt in South Africa. The country licenses each hunter to kill only one rhino per year. South Africa, however stopped licensing Vietnamese hunters this year due to concerns over their breaching of hunting and trading laws.