Review. A 20-year History of South Africa’s Commercial Abalone Industry (Part 4 of 7)

Read about international smuggling rings, help from the inside, and the confiscated abalone.

Then in January 2008, journalist Karyn Maughan (currently embroiled in a legal fracas with former President, Jacob Zuma), reported about 21 people accused of operating South Africa’s biggest international abalone-smuggling ring. They had walked out of court free men and without any evidence heard against them.

The Cape Town regional court struck from the roll the abalone racketeering case and its 112 charges, which had begun more than two years previously. Gauteng businessman Wei Lui Lui and his co-accused were alleged to have been in illegal possession of 470 tons of perlemoen valued at R200-million, almost four times the total allowable catch of 125 tons for the entire industry for the whole of the previous year.

A couple of months later the court upheld the ban on abalone fishing.