• The passenger, coming from Lima via Paris, tried to bypass Customs control at Bilbao airport wearing the jacket and carrying 10,900 euros without declaring it.

• The traveler said that he had hunted it himself in the Amazon.

July 12, 2024.- Officials from the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency, together with civil guards from the Tax and Border Section of the Bilbao airport, intervened last June a giant anaconda skin jacket worn by a passenger in the airport arrivals hall.

Investigators from the Customs Surveillance Service and the Civil Guard who act as State Fiscal Security, under the functional dependence of the Regional Customs and Tax Agency. of the AEAT in the Basque Country, carry out daily inspections of passengers and luggage according to preventive risk criteria at Bilbao airport, among other actions.

The agents carried out a search and inspection of the luggage of a traveller from Peru via Paris, observing that he was carrying 10,900 euros in cash, as well as that he was wearing a jacket apparently made of snakeskin.

When asked if he had the declaration of movements of means of payment (E1) of the money, and about the type of material of the garment he was wearing, the traveler said that he did not have the aforementioned mandatory declaration and that the jacket was made from the skin of a giant anaconda that he himself had hunted with a harpoon in the Amazon rainforest.

The passenger's response and the suspicion of an attempt to evade customs control alerted SVA agents and civil guards, so an immediate consultation was made with the Official Service for Inspection, Surveillance and Regulation of Exports (Soivre).

Soivre confirmed that it was a specimen belonging to the 'Eunectes murinus' family, protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), so the garment was seized.

The author remains under investigation for an alleged crime against flora and fauna, and the money he was carrying in cash was also seized. The proceedings have been handed over to the Bilbao Court on Duty.