{"id":53552,"date":"2014-03-17T09:49:05","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T13:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/target\/smuggled-iguanas-part-of-international-racket"},"modified":"2014-03-18T09:42:30","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T13:42:30","slug":"bahamians-involved-in-iguana-smuggling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2014\/03\/bahamians-involved-in-iguana-smuggling","title":{"rendered":"Bahamians Involved in Iguana Smuggling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"permalinkable\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-53924\" alt=\"iguana\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/iguana.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"212\" \/>The two Romanian tourists who stuffed 13 iguanas into socks and smuggled them out of the Bahamas last month were a part of an international illegal racket which sells the critically endangered animals for thousands of dollars, according to Minister of National Security Dr Bernard Nottage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">Mr Nottage said officials learned that there were plans to sell the male San Salvador rock iguanas for $10,000 and the females for $30,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">It is believed that the animals were caught in New Providence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">When the women were stopped at London Heathrow\u2019s Terminal 5 by United Kingdom customs officers on February 4, the iguanas were concealed in a suitcase.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">Officials believe they were attempting to smuggle the iguanas into Dusseldorf, Germany.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">Tragically, only 12 of the iguanas survived the journey. Dr Nottage said authorities found that they initially intended to smuggle more than 50 iguanas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\" id=\"h53394-p10\">The two women, ages 24 and 26, were arrested on suspicion of importation offences.<\/p>\n<p id=\"mct-ai-attriblink\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tribune242.com\/news\/2014\/mar\/14\/smuggled-iguanas-part-of-international-racket\/\" target=\"_blank\">Click here to read the complete article at tribune242.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Experts say that it would have been impossible to capture and smuggle iguanas out of The Bahamas without the help of corrupt Bahamians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":53921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[63,93,31,2001],"class_list":["post-53552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-animals","tag-corruption","tag-crime","tag-smuggling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}