Tracking Blood Money: Financial investigations into wildlife crime in East Africa

By Amanda Gore

Boniface Mathew Malyongo was, by most accounts, the perfect fit for a Hollywood villain. Nicknamed ‘Shetani’ (Satan, or the devil, in Kiswahili), he was allegedly one of the most prolific elephant poachers and ivory traffickers in the world, accused by some of controlling as many as 15 poaching gangs responsible for killing up to 10 000 elephants in five countries. The Leonardo DiCaprio-produced documentary, The Ivory Game, which culminated with dramatic footage of Malyongo’s arrest in Tanzania, assured him a certain degree of global infamy. And when he was jailed for 12 years in 2018, conservation organizations and activists around the world rejoiced. But Malyongo appealed, and in 2020 Tanzania’s Court of Appeal quashed the conviction. For conservationists, it was a stunning reversal – the court ruled that there were basic errors and police missteps that fatally compromised the chain of evidence, a complete lack of evidence to prove the key elements of the crimes and an overreliance on confessions as proof of guilt. Despite charging Malyongo with ‘leading organized crime’, as defined in Tanzania’s Economic and Organized Crime Control Act, investigators and prosecutors produced no hard evidence that he organized, directed or financed a ‘criminal racket’, or reaped a profit from it. The case and the vast sums involved could have been a chance to unravel the financial threads underpinning an alleged transnational syndicate, yet no financial investigation was ever done. Police seized four vehicles and identified several properties, including a house and a supermarket, which, they said, had been obtained as a result of poaching activities. But that is where the financial inquiries stopped. No attempt was made to produce evidence showing how the syndicate financed its operations, where the money originated, how it flowed or how it was laundered. While the effect of the judgment is that Malyongo has been found innocent, the conduct of the public officials in this case, the police and prosecutors, is a matter that deserves scrutiny

Geneva, CH: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 44p.