The result, as well, was to produce a burgeoning black market — one estimate puts it at 30, tons a year at its peak — that some suggest threatened the very foundations of the Montreal Protocol. Granted the problem is self-limiting — no automobile built after uses CFCs in its air conditioning system and there are substitutes which are actually cheaper for other refrigerant uses.
Nonetheless, there is still an enormous number of used cars in the USA; they are often exported to other countries; and the ozone problem is so urgent any continued CFC use is worrisome.
CFCs are a colourless, odourless gas, making detection difficult. And cover for illegal imports is provided by the existence of a residual legal import quota, for essentials like inhalers, for re-export to places where their use continues to be legal under the Protocol, and for industrial feedstock inside the USA provided they are destroyed in the process.
The techniques for violation are the obvious ones: claim the material is part of that permitted for essentials; bribe Customs inspectors; smuggle via Mexico using any of the thousands of trucks rolling across the border; hide the gas cylinders inside other, larger cylinders with benign markings; interchange containers in ports; mislabel the material as similar but legal chemicals e. From point of production to final sale inside North America, the black market CFCs are marketed through an underground network that is embedded inside the legal business structure.
It runs from developing country manufacturer to international chemical broker to legal exporter to smuggler to illegal importer to legal distributor to retailer. That last link in the chain is often a service station owner or an auto parts shopkeeper who might not even be aware of the illegal origins of the product. True, in some respects, the offence seems to fit the commercial category — it appears to occur in a normal business context, and most transactions are settled in normal banking instruments.
Nonetheless, it is an offence in which there is no force or fraud, except with respect to false customs declaration, and transfers take place on a strictly volitional basis. Furthermore, as with things like illicit jewellery sales evading the excise tax, the distinction between underground network and legitimate business context is not really important — they are one and the same. Bears are the only significant mammal producers of ursodeoxycholic acid used and of proven efficacy for treating a wide range of ailments.
In addition, bear paw is regarded in the Orient as a delicacy and an aphrodisiac. With the Asian black bear hunted to near extinction, pressure is growing on North American species. Poaching of bears in Canada takes place in and through a jurisdictional maze.
Each province regulates its own wildlife — some ban bear hunting and trading in parts; others permit hunting, but not trading in parts; others permit both under restriction. The federal government also has rules for trade in wildlife outside of a province. This jumble of often contradictory regulations and laws provides an excellent means for those intent on violation to find a way of falling through the cracks. The chain begins with hunting. It is legal with strict quantity limits in most provinces.
Poachers are different. Unlike legal hunters, who almost exclusively target mature males, poachers target all of the population because, alas for bears, the size of their gall bladders bears no relationship to their age or sex — rather it reflects such factors as diet.
Typically, poachers target bears in the spring, when they are hungry and sluggish from hibernation, and they attract the bears with food-baited traps. Poachers are typically paid in cash. The gall bladders are collected by outfitters or passed on directly by hunters to middlemen who in turn sell them to travelling wholesalers, again usually for cash. Typically the transaction will occur in a bar or hotel room in some small town near the wilderness where wildlife officials are few, and local law enforcement officers are likely to be fairly sympathetic towards hunters generally.
Then the wholesalers might take the galls to a big city — Toronto and Vancouver are the main staging points. They are turned over directly to Chinese pharmacies for local sale quite openly or to brokers who arrange their transportation out of the country.
If the sale is to a local pharmacy, payments might be in the form of bank instruments, albeit with their purpose disguised by invoice fraud. If bound abroad, the bladders, usually dried, are consigned singly or in small lots to couriers who are usually members of extended families.
At that point the trade might well be covered by a standard bank letter of credit. Laundering is commonplace. Some provinces and states permit hunting but ban the trade in parts.
One trick apparently common in Quebec is to extract the bile from several small bladders and inject it into a larger one, then export it with a single permit. Even where it is legal to hunt and export parts, there is a parallel illegal trade that is driven by the desire to avoid taxes and duties, the nuisance of filling out forms and obtaining permits, the search for top quality bladders that may be obtainable only out of season or from animals in protected areas, or, not least, by the need to witness the hunt to reduce the chances of being conned.
When the bladders are sold, there is fakery aplenty in the trade — which is one reason why buyers in the Orient sometimes insist on sending their own hunters or else demanding parts be accompanied by videotapes showing the bladders being removed.
For some reason bile from larger gall bladders is considered more desirable, and therefore fetches a higher price per gram, than from smaller. Investopedia does not include all offers available in the marketplace. An unlawful loan is a loan that fails to comply with lending laws, such as loans with illegally high interest rates or those that exceed size limits. Stretch Loan Definition A stretch loan is a form of financing for an individual or a business that's intended to cover a short-term gap in the borrower's income.
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