Illegal wildlife trade in southern Africa facilitated via fraud

Poachers and hunters are committing fraud to enable slaughter of big game in southern Africa and shipping their trophies — or horns and tusks — over borders. One CFE is valiantly working to reverse the accelerating carnage and corruption.

Imagine the lifeless body of a rhino or elephant, still warm after it dies from a high-powered rifle shot on preservation land in southern Africa. As it bleeds out, thieves saw off its horn or tusks that are destined to be trinkets or ground into “miraculous cure-all” powder. It’s a horrendous scene, but we don’t necessarily think that fraud is involved with the animal’s death and dismemberment.

Yet much of the illegal wildlife trade in southern Africa depends on fraud whether animals are killed by poachers sneaking onto a preserve or purported trophy hunters led by professional guides. (The United Nations designates southern Africa as South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. But it can include Zimbabwe and parts of Mozambique.)

Some nations often use fees collected from allowed hunts and the trade of animal parts for conservation efforts, but sometimes authorities fraudulently award permits. The criminals export the animals’ parts where they’re sold on the black market — primarily in Asia.

In a well-known 2018 case, Paul Jackson, an American hunter, shot an elephant in a Zimbabwean national park while on an allegedly illegal hunt facilitated through bribery of government officials by Hanno van Rensburg, a South African owner of a safari business. Jackson couldn’t ship the ivory out of Zimbabwe as an American because of international regulations. So, van Rensburg allegedly arranged for fraudulent documentation that showed Jackson was a South Africa resident, and the animal was a “problem elephant” rather than a trophy kill, which allowed the delivery of the tusks across the border to South Africa. (See Owner of South African hunting company indicted by US prosecutors over illegal elephant hunt, Mongabay, June 4, 2018.)

Later in 2018, South African authorities released a Thai national, Chumlong Lemthongthai, from prison just six years into a 40-year sentence he received in 2012 after he pleaded guilty to arranging bogus rhino hunts to supply horns for the lucrative Asian black market. Lemthongthai’s initial sentence had been earlier reduced twice on appeals. (See Anger as rhino trade kingpin released from S. African jail, Phys.org, Sept. 17, 2018.)

In an interview with Fraud Magazine, Paul O’Sullivan, CFE, a forensic and loss control consultant in Johannesburg, South Africa, who worked on the Lemthongthai case in cooperation with authorities, discussed what he referred to as “pseudo-hunting” and the illegal wildlife trade in southern Africa. “In this case, we had some ‘professional’ hunters who were involved,” he says.

“In most parts of Africa, the big-game hunter applies for and gets issued a permit to hunt a particular animal. He is required to pay [for the permit] and be accompanied by a registered ‘professional hunter’ who goes on the hunt to make sure the local laws are complied with,” says O’Sullivan, who was the ACFE Certified Fraud Examiner of the Year in 2014.

According to O’Sullivan, Lemthongthai recruited and paid Thai women from brothels to use their passports in the hunt-permit application and horn-exporting processes. “The professional hunters knew that the trophy hunters [the Thai prostitutes] were not really hunters at all. In fact, each woman was only brought along after an animal had been killed and posed for photos so that if anyone asked questions, they had ‘proof’ that she shot the animal. … Fraud was committed every step of the way, the last step being the export of the ‘trophy,’ ” O’Sullivan says.

Institutional and cultural issues complicate prevention and investigation

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) — an agreement among 183 governments to ensure international trade of wild animals and plants doesn’t threaten their survival — regulates the trade of animal products from southern Africa such as rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks, lion bones or abalone (marine snails). Although CITES is legally binding, it doesn’t supersede national laws but instead provides a framework that convention participants must implement and enforce at national levels. (See What is CITES? CITES.)

The task of enforcing laws and regulations designed to prevent poaching and illegal trafficking of wildlife in southern Africa often ends up split among conservationists, park personnel, wildlife managers and specialized law enforcement units. Because much of the illegal wildlife trade is international, a lack of communication or cooperation among these groups in different countries impedes any enforcement efforts. (See How to Stop Poaching and Protect Endangered Species? Forget the ‘Kingpins,’ by Rachel Nuwer, The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2018.)

“The whole effort is fragmented,” says O’Sullivan. “The [South African] police have a special endangered species unit that deals with CITES contraventions. They are under-resourced and therefore only deal with the low-hanging fruit,” says O’Sullivan.

The Lemthongthai case might not have ever come to fruition without O’Sullivan’s involvement through a charity, Forensics for Justice, which he formed, funds and manages along with his private forensic and loss control firm.

Institutional corruption is often cited as the reason many poaching cases are never prosecuted even when suspects are detained or arrested.

Fragmented enforcement and prevention efforts and a lack of resources might not even be the most significant contributing factors to the illegal wildlife trade in southern Africa — particularly its poaching aspect. A recent study published in the scientific journal, Nature Communications, found that levels of poverty and corruption correlated with levels of elephant poaching in Africa more strongly than estimates of law enforcement adequacy. (See African elephant poaching rates correlate with local poverty, national corruption and global ivory price, by Severin Hauenstein, Mrigesh Kshatriya, Julian Blanc, Carsten Dormann and Colin Beale, Nature Communications, May 28.)

“When you don’t have a proper roof over your head, and no electricity or running water, why should you be bothered about saving a few animals?” O’Sullivan asks. “Especially if you can get some money to buy food for your family, or shoes for your children, by helping poachers creep into a reserve in the dead of night and kill and remove rhino horns and slip away before dawn.”

And corruption creates a vicious cycle in which those in power skew government policies or decisions to divert scarce resources away from the people who need them the most in order to enrich themselves. This denies those living in poverty access to adequate resources and ultimately leaves them feeling helpless because of harsh physical and mental effects of poverty and exclusion from any meaningful decision-making.

In addition to exacerbating poverty, corruption weakens those who intend to stand in the way of illegal wildlife trading — wildlife managers, prosecutors, police and government officials. Institutional corruption is often cited as the reason many poaching cases are never prosecuted even when suspects are detained or arrested. (See Rhino poaching in South Africa has dipped but corruption hinders progress, by Keith Somerville, The Conversation, Feb. 8, 2018.)

What can be done?

Various groups and governments have proposed wide-ranging solutions to illegal wildlife trade in southern Africa. Many regional wildlife advocates suggest removing bans or loosening regulations related to hunting certain species or the trade of their parts. They argue that the additional revenue could go toward preservation and prevention efforts, and a legal and regulated industry could cut down on incentives for poaching. (See African nations call for an end to ivory ban, by Peta Thornycroft, The Telegraph, May 6, and The day ED took animal rights groups to ‘tusk,’ by Emmanuel Koro, The Herald, July 2.)

Others claim that boosting the technological capabilities of anti-poaching efforts through use of new geo-location chips, sensors, cameras and drones, plus enhancing the sharing of information among agencies in the region would have a significant impact, although this would require financial resources that are always scarce in the region. (See The Technology that Will Finally Stop Poachers, by Helena Pozniak, Popular Mechanics, Nov. 26, 2018.)

I asked O’Sullivan what policies he’d change if he was in charge of combating poaching and the illegal wildlife trade in southern Africa. “I would tighten up on the controls, particularly with regard to CITES permits, and closely monitor movement in the ports,” he says. “I would also institute a reward system so that we got a lot more whistleblowers coming forward.”

However, whatever tactical, regulatory or logistical improvements are made, little progress will be made if they aren’t paired with policies to curb corruption and poverty in southern Africa that remove incentives for fraudsters facilitating the illegal wildlife trade.

“If we really want to save these animals from extinction, we need to look after the people who live near to them first so we can all live in harmony,” O’Sullivan says.

Mason Wilder, CFE, is a research specialist with the ACFE. Contact him at mwilder@ACFE.com.