There’s a thriving illegal wildlife trade in Cambodia that caters to high-ranking government officials and wealthy Chinese nationals, according to a report on a yearlong undercover investigation by the U.S.-based NGO Earth League International (ELI).
The report, titled “Sandokan,” identified five kingpins allegedly running transnational criminal networks involved in wildlife smuggling, human and drug trafficking, and sophisticated scam centers, reports Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman.
The investigation found that products made from parts of endangered species, including tigers, rhinos and elephants, are openly sold in shops and exclusive restaurants across the country. ELI investigators documented tiger bone wine sold in ornate tiger-shaped bottles as a prestige item; tiger cub meat served as a culinary delicacy; and rooms filled with rhino horns and elephant ivory.
“The big surprise was the incredible quantity of wildlife in the hands of these people,” said Andrea Crosta, executive director of ELI.
The report highlights a convergence of environmental crime and organized syndicate activity. Wildlife products were often stored in warehouses located in special economic zones (SEZs) — designated industrial and commercial areas that offer tax incentives. The same buildings also housed illicit drugs and illegally logged timber, the investigation found.
Wildlife trafficking often coexisted with money laundering through casinos in the SEZs, a model also present in Laos for more than a decade, as exposed by the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in its 2015 report about Kings Romans Casino in Laos’s Golden Triangle SEZ.
One individual who said they worked in logistics told ELI investigators he could move anything, claiming he had close connections to Cambodian customs officials as well as the country’s political, military, and business elites, facilitating the movement of contraband across porous borders. Another individual claimed he raised lions, tigers and primates on his property. Some kingpins also reportedly said any wild animal, alive or dead, could be delivered to customers.
This rampant trade casts a shadow over Cambodia’s proposed plan to reintroduce wild tigers, which were declared functionally extinct in the country a decade ago.
“I would urge everyone to take a beat and really review the prospects for success in that endeavor,” said Debbie Banks, the tiger and wildlife crime campaign lead at the EIA, who wasn’t involved in the ELI investigation.
“The lack of enforcement, the reported corruption and complicity — that is not a good environment to put tigers back into the country,” she said, adding the big cats would be at “extreme risk.”
ELI’s Crosta said traditional seizures at airports are insufficient to disrupt the wildlife trafficking networks, and called for intelligence-led undercover operations.
The report urged China to take responsibility for its nationals who, according to Crosta, facilitate 90% of the wildlife trafficking in Southeast Asia.
Read the full story by Spoorthy Raman here.
Banner image: Multiple tiger skins offered for sale by alleged traffickers to undercover investigators. Image courtesy of Earth League International.
