Wong Keng Liang

Smuggling career Wong ran Sungai Rusa Wildlife in Penang, a legal reptile export company founded in the early 1980s. However, as well as legal exports he also smuggled snow leopard pelts, panda bear skins, rhino horns, rare birds, Komodo dragons, chinchillas, gorillas, tigers and elephants from Australia, China, Madagascar, New Zealand, South America, and elsewhere to markets largely in Europe, Japan, and the United States. With more protected species he exploited his country's weaker wildlife protection laws and easily corruptible customs officials in order to verify the animal's documentation, thereby allowing him to sell the animals elsewhere in the world.

"They'll definitely be coming with papers. I will have a fall guy and he will get arrested. Plus the goods will be confiscated, and the goods will be sold to me by the department."|Wong told an American undercover agent that he could smuggle Timor pythons by exploiting corruption in the Malaysian government. Wong was arrested after he came to collect the suitcase. The Malaysian government then took action to restrict Wong and his activities: business licenses were revoked, his zoo was shut down, and animal collection – including his bengal tigers – seized. Wong claimed that he had not applied for a permit simply because the customer was rushing him to get the snakes in time for Eid al-Fitr.

In November 2010, a judge sentenced Wong to five years in prison, a strict sentence for animal smuggling by most nation's standards and completely unprecedented in Malaysian legal history. Speaking in 2015, Daniel Tanuwidjaja, an Indonesian animal smuggler, admitted that he still was regularly dealing with Wong and his wife following Wong's release from prison. Tanuwidjaja said that he paid off wildlife and customs officials in both Indonesia and Malaysia to avoid arrest. A documentary investigatory team discovered a number of shell companies and exotic wildlife in Malaysia linked to Wong, demonstrating the country's continued struggle with corruption and enforcement of its wildlife laws.