Two Uruguayans were sentenced to prison for the unusual smuggling of drugs destined for the pharmaceutical industry. Bovine gallstones are highly prized in Asia for their soothing, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory properties.
This week, the Uruguayan justice system sentenced two brothers to prison for drug trafficking. bovine gallstones from Uruguay to Hong Kong, paid at a higher price than gold for use in the pharmaceutical industryjudicial and police sources indicated.
A 50-year-old man was sentenced to two years and one month for smuggling and money laundering, while his sister, aged 48, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for assisting money laundering, which she will serve on probation.
According to the indictment, dated May, the man admitted that since 2020 he had illegally acquired bovine gallstones from slaughterhouses located in five departments of Uruguay: Canelones, Montevideo (south), Durazno (center), Salto and Paysandú (northwest).
He said that he used to go to the meat processing plants with his father, now deceased, where they were attended by the owners or senior staff. There they received the product, which they weighed with a precision scale and They paid between US$198,000 and US$200,000 per kilo in cash. Gold is currently selling for about US$83,000 per kilo.
The calculations were then sent by parcel through the international company DHL, according to the indictment, which states that the buyers were two Hong Kong firms, identified by the initials HHL and HTBTC, which paid by transfer to bank accounts in Uruguay. The profit from the business was about $8,000 per kilo, according to the investigation.
Court documents show that the convicted Uruguayan received more than $3.2 million in bank transfers from the two Hong Kong companies in recent years. An additional $188,000 was transferred to his sister’s account.
Both had a vehicle and a property in Montevideo valued at around 2.5 million dollars confiscated.
What are bovine gallstones used for?
Gallstones from cattle, occasionally found in the vesicles of animals during meat processing, are highly prized in Asia, where their soothing, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory properties are used to make medicines.
Source: Ambito
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