Mongabay Latam reports on a case that shows how difficult it is to control the international trade in shark fins. In November 2025, Peruvian authorities, with support from the USA, confiscated 9.3 tons of dried shark fins in the port area Callao. Nevertheless, the affected company Inversiones Perú Flippers is said to have subsequently received further export permits.
According to the report, the seized goods had an estimated value of $11.2 million on the black market. For this amount of shark fins, approximately 9,000 sharks would have been killed. Many of the affected species are listed in CITES Appendix II, so their international trade is not banned across the board, but is subject to strict approval and documentation.
Nine tons after confiscation
Mongabay Latam evaluated several decisions of the Peruvian Ministry of Production Produce. Accordingly, between the seizure in November 2025 and June 2026, six further export permits were approved for a total of 9,087 kilograms of dried shark fins. Target market was Hong Kong.
The majority of these new permits concerned the Pacific thresher shark (Alopias pelagicus), a species classified as endangered by the IUCN and covered by CITES rules in international trade. This point is central to Haitauchen: protection status alone is of little use if the origin of a product cannot be completely traced.
What was found in Callao
According to the report, the original deployment took place on November 10, 2025. The police initially stopped Juan Roberto Quispe Huamaní with 112 kilograms of fresh shark fins without documents of legal origin. Investigators then searched a warehouse of Inversiones Perú Flippers and found 338 bags containing a total of 9,380 kilograms of shark fins.
The public prosecutor’s office is investigating suspected illegal trade in protected species and suspected organized crime. Quispe Huamaní is the managing director and sole legal representative of Inversiones Perú Flippers. According to the report, a court did not order pre-trial detention, but instead ordered conditions, a ban on leaving the country and a bail; the investigation continues.
CITES, documents and gaps
CITES exports require proof of legal origin and traceability in Peru. This includes catch and landing documents, transport certificates and processing certificates. In addition, there must be a scientific finding of non-harmfulness for the respective species, which confirms that the trade does not endanger the wild population.
It is precisely this chain that is criticized. Mongabay describes cases in which Produce found discrepancies in applications but still approved subsets. In a case from June 2026, more than 4,000 kilograms of Pacific thresher shark fins were involved: approval was rejected for 1,829 kilograms due to a lack of proof of origin and traceability, but was granted for 2,302 kilograms.
Several endangered species affected
Before the seizure, according to Mongabay’s evaluation, Produce had already approved more than 23 tons of dried fins for export to Hong Kong between January and November 2025. Be mentioned next Alopias pelagicus also blue shark (Prionace glauca), common thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus), smooth hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena) and copper shark (Carcharhinus brachyurus).
That makes the case bigger than a single company file. The trade brings together fins of various species, some of which migrate long distances, grow slowly and are heavily polluted by fishing. If documents can be manipulated or gaps in the supply chain can be subsequently smoothed over, a species protection instrument becomes a paper filter.
Why sanctions are crucial
According to the Produce Sanctions Directorate, there were no administrative sanction proceedings against Inversiones Perú Flippers or Quispe Huamaní in its own databases. The environmental lawyer César Ipenza criticizes in the Mongabay report that a procedure must be initiated if irregularities are discovered and that authorities could carry out stricter examinations in known risk cases.
The Peruvian case is therefore a warning signal for shark protection. International rules like CITES can guide trade, but they are no substitute for inspection at the port, no audit of the supply chain and no consequences for false documents. When it comes to shark fins in particular, protection is often not decided on the high seas, but in file files, warehouses and export notices.
