It is no secret that SA’s infrastructure is being stripped bare. In Gauteng railway stations in Kliptown and Jeppe have been dismantled brick by brick while kilometres of track have been plundered only to be sold off to unscrupulous scrap metal dealers.
However, another part of SA’s national patrimony is also under siege: its world-renowned fauna. In the small seaside town of Onrus, near Hermanus, on almost any evening divers can be seen at dusk signalling from the surf to hooded figures on the shoreline. Ask any local what they are up to and you will be told matter-of-factly that they are poaching perlemoen (abalone).
Like many criminals in SA they operate with impunity. Often linked to the same underworld figures who run the Western Cape’s drug trade, perlemoen poachers are given a wide berth by a fearful citizenry. The police too turn a blind eye, knowing that when their shifts end they often have to return to the same communities where these maritime criminals reside.
Though illegal divers only earn about R450/kg for the poached abalone, it can retail for R24,000/kg in Asian restaurants, according to a recent report by the SA Anti-Money-Laundering Integrated Task Force (Samlit).
SA’s hinterland too offers lucrative opportunities for poachers. Samlit’s report shows that live pangolins, the world’s most trafficked animal, can fetch anything from R30,000 to R500,000. The fast disappearing animal’s meat sells for $350/kg in Vietnam while its scales can be worth $3,000/kg.
Yet it is not the poachers who earn most of this ill-gotten money but the kingpins behind the illicit wildlife trade, who often pose behind legitimate businesses. Rhino horn has been estimated to be worth up to $60,000 per pound (about 453g) on the black market but Samlit says local poachers only make R2,000-R5,000 per trip while intermediaries higher up the food chain earn R80,000-R125,000/kg for illicit rhino horn.
Trust accounts
One of the ways Samlit is looking to combat the illicit wildlife trade is to focus on the financial flows that prop it up. Gerald Byleveld, head of financial crime at Investec and a lead author of the Samlit report, says the key protagonists in the trade often collaborate to launder money. For example, one might purchase a property on the strength of a long-term lease. A criminal associate then rents the property for an inflated monthly sum that is paid in cash using money from the illegal wildlife trade. Years later the property can be sold and the proceeds split.
Attorney trust accounts are also favourite money-laundering vehicles used by syndicate masterminds who enter into phoney transactions involving shell companies with no underlying operations. The money used to fund these bogus transactions is deposited into an attorney trust account where it comingles with other funds. When the transaction is closed the funds are legitimised and difficult to trace back to the illicit wildlife trade.
Samlit has identified taxidermists, game lodges, casinos, restaurants and other cash-intensive businesses as typical front companies used by illegal wildlife traders to launder money. Corrupt police officers, customs officials and even diplomats are often involved.
One of the reasons Samlit is trying to home in on the money laundering associated with the illicit wildlife trade is that convictions usually carry harsher sentences than those for the illegal trade itself. Unfortunately, 86% of SA’s financial institutions have no specific systems in place to detect financial flows associated with the illegal wildlife trade.
Byleveld says banks cannot combat such crimes on their own. Instead, he is calling on all SA businesses to conduct a thorough audit of their operations to determine whether they are being used to facilitate the illegal trade in wildlife.
He specifically mentions courier companies who are used to transport the products, and casinos who are used for money laundering or whose chips are used to pay off key players in the trade.
But responsible corporate citizenry can only go so far. Without severe consequences for those implicated in the illicit wildlife trade the practice seems destined to continue.
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