As the sun rose and so did the temperature, Sadeb drove to the village with Wadugagu, one of the leaders of the former MNLA. Surrounded by mud houses, each with a field yard in front of it, Api Niu squatted in such a yard, waiting for a secret transaction at a pre-appointed time.

Api Niu watched the goats, sheep, and the donkey strolling around the yard, business has been booming recently, and it is very busy, how good it is to be as leisurely as the donkey, and if you want the female donkey, you can bark, and the people who call are panicked. The price of Toyota pickup trucks has risen again, and I don't know what evil is done, everyone likes to use Toyota pickup trucks to convert into infantry fighting vehicles, resulting in a bit of a tight supply, but fortunately I got five new pickup trucks from the people of Areshan, and then installed the Russian-made 14.5 mm caliber KPV anti-aircraft machine gun or Russian-made 23 mm caliber ZU-23 double-barreled machine gun in the cellar, and the price of the formed combat vehicle will be higher.

Api Niu was not surprised by the arrival of the two of them, the business partner who had already successfully traded once, said hello, the owner wearing a traditional Malian robe took the guests to the courtyard of the house next door, lifted the tarp inside were five modified Toyota pickup chariots, Api Niu proudly patted the hood of the car and said, "The car is fast, the loading capacity is large, the performance is reliable, and the most important thing is that the firepower is fierce, it can directly blow the helicopter to pieces, and it can also kill the enemy hiding in the light armored vehicle, The French Tiger medium attack helicopter is useless, don't look at its cool shape, as soon as you fire the 14.5mm caliber bullet I equipped you with, it will 'explode'. After saying that, he made a helicopter volley explosion.

Wadugagu was very satisfied with the car, and said that he would go back to the original yard to pay the rest of the money for the goods, and the money was on the car, and Api Niu was not worried about their tricks, not to mention that there were more than a dozen of their brothers in the rooms of the two yards, but that this village was also the nest of their smugglers, and that seven or eight out of ten families in the village were directly or indirectly involved in the smuggling. A situation of "family-style operation, industrialized management, and local protection" has been formed, and as long as a gunshot is fired, hundreds of villagers will be transformed into freedom fighters, and there are more than 2,700 people in the whole village, and the combat effectiveness is very strong. Just as he was about to return to his original courtyard through the secret passage between the courtyard walls, Api Ox pushed Wadugagu and Sadbu to the ground, and gagged him again, listening to the sound of the donkey, who seemed to realize his master's misfortune, and called hard. He was very angry, so loudly that his friends would not hear the movement, and would not be able to react immediately, the stupid donkey.

More than 800 heavily armed soldiers of the 265th Battalion have taken control of the outskirts of the village, and they have taken up the task of covering, mainly attacking the "Assault Team against Speculation and Smuggling Office" under the leadership of Zhou Botao, referred to as the "Assault Team", which is organized according to the regimental structure and has a total of 1,450 officers and men. It is composed of 30 percent of Burmese soldiers, 30 percent of the members of the Development Party, 30 percent of the members of the Golden Crow Sect, and 10 percent of the former members of the Flying Dragon Society. Regiment Commander Zhou Botao, Deputy Regiment Commander Wadugagu, Chief of Staff Sadebu.

Thousands of people were scattered around the village to arrest people as secretly as possible, and the commandos did not call for an excuse in advance to check the water meter and send a courier. This doesn't work in Mali, where clean drinking water is not guaranteed, there are no water meters, let alone online shopping, and fortunately the weather is hot and few people are outside. Most people are hiding in their rooms. Just catch the turtle in the urn and catch it right.

The subsequent search of Api Niu's yard made an unexpected discovery, there was a hole in the corner of his room, very hidden, and below it was a tunnel that could lead to a cave outside the village, and in the cave was a modified factory, and two pickup trucks were parked, and seven or eight workers were busy working.

The distance from the tunnel to the cave is 160 meters, and it can be reached in just 1 minute at a normal travel speed, while vehicles staying in the cave can get away from the village in 1 minute. In other words, it takes 30 minutes for the military police to get here after an anomaly, and the smugglers can escape from here in as little as 2 minutes.

This was the first confrontation between the "dealers" and the smugglers, and it was also the first thing that Wadugagu did with his special status, which made the chief of staff Saddb very jealous, and he swore that he would come to a big vote and do something to spare the people of the Sahara Desert.

In the old village of the Niger River, Kintosh runs a bustling guesthouse and a factory that sells crafts that mimic statues of early West African artefacts, mainly for backpackers from Western countries or tour groups organized by travel agencies. Usually during the golden season in Mali in winter, beds in the family hotels in Kintos are in short supply. But due to the tensions in Mali last year, most European tourists canceled their trips, and business is not very good this year, but Sadeb told Zhou Botao that the real big money of Jintosh is made from the hands of cultural relics collectors, especially collectors from Europe, if it is a genuine cultural relic, they are usually willing to pay tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a huge amount of money in Mali.

In the main hall of the family hotel, there are three beds close to the wall for visitors to rest, the environment in the inn is peaceful, the temperature is cool, and the sun is high outside, Kintosh falls asleep on the mattress under the cliff outside, and a Korean sleeps on the simple bed by the door, and the other bed is his guide.

Sadebu walked in and woke up Jintosh, handed over a few photos, and said proudly, "Something like that, as long as it's genuine, it's just a matter of how much money it is." "The people of the Diareshan have controlled the trade routes of West Africa for thousands of years, as long as they can make money, black slaves, diamonds, elephants, drugs, everything is sold, as long as you need it, I can provide it, it is their consistent spoken language, cultural relics, can only be regarded as a small business.

Kintosh yawned and walked into a storage room, and a few minutes later came out with a few items in hand, all wrapped in a white cloth. The first package was opened, revealing a fine sculpture of a human figure, carved into a piece of light-colored wood that had clearly shown signs of age. Kintosh said he had found it in a cave near the village, and he played with it, saying, "It's at least 800 years old, and you can ask all my customers about it, and what I'm dealing with is absolutely genuine." With that, he pointed to the South Koreans who had woken up.

Park Joong-kang, the second Shaodong of South Korea's Daepark Shipbuilding & Marine Co., Ltd., manages the Ulsan Shipyard, one of the world's top 10 shipyards under the family business, and came to Mali to relax for tourism, and second, his younger brother Park Shujin was ill and asked him to come to Mali to collect some pre-determined works of art. Park Sok-kim, who does not like to inherit the family business, has been fascinated by African antiquities since university, and in recent years, the price of Malian antiquities has risen at an alarming rate in the international antiquities market, and even man-made and exquisite imitations are expensive. With the rise in prices, Park Zhongkang's meticulous antiquities smuggling network has also been formed, bringing a lot of income to his family, Park Zhongkang often returns to Mali once a year, this time the cultural relics to be traded are particularly artistic and archaeological value, just Park Zhongkang wanted to go backpacking to Africa, and the younger brother entrusted the elder brother to complete this matter.

Park Joong-kang saw that the age and packaging of the portrait sculpture in the boss's hand were not as good as the items in his wooden box, so he was not interested in looking at it, but just nodded and greeted him in a friendly manner.

"Recently, the Bamako International Airport has been difficult to deal with, and the gendarmerie has issued export certificates only when they think that the exported items are really not cultural heritage, as if they had taken the wrong medicine," said Quintos. Or take the goods overland to Niger, where Malian customs officials at the border are often too lazy to open wooden boxes. If he asks, you tell them that you bought it for $100 as a gift for your family, so that no one asks anymore, and usually doesn't bother to open the wooden box, and even if he wants to open the box, such an official can buy it with dollars, usually around $100, and you can go together and take care of each other. ”

It seems that the Malian government has made some efforts to combat the theft of cultural relics, Park Jong-kang expressed some of his concerns, and Kim Tosh said with a smile, "Antiquities dealers like us are like drug dealers in Mexico, we have built a strong network that can connect the poorest villagers in Mali with the richest collectors in Europe, nothing can stop us, the locals need money to renovate the schools in the village, the young people need money to improve their lives, no one can really organize us, and the government can't do it." ”

Antiquities theft and smuggling rings never stopped, and Mali's location on the gold trade route in sub-Saharan Africa makes its artefacts of great artistic and archaeological value.

Sadebu felt that it was time to arrest them, not to mention the stolen goods, and the fact that there was also a foreign smuggler who could use this as a breakthrough to open the iron curtain of the national antiquities smuggling syndicate in Mali.

Kintosh was quick to admit that he had collected artifacts from local villagers and sold them to collectors around the world, which was of course a blatant illegal transaction, but even if he didn't do it at a low cost and high profits, his poor villagers would still have someone to do it.

Since the sentencing for the crime of smuggling is too low, then the crime of speculation is applied, and the crime of speculation is reversed to make huge profits by means of buying short and selling, hoarding, and arbitrage and resale, and the maximum sentence can be the death penalty. (To be continued......)