Initial Analysis of The Financial Flows and Payment Mechanisms Behind Wildlife and Forest Crime

By TRAFFIC

  This highly lucrative illicit business is managed by organised criminal groups through a variety of payment mechanisms. These mechanisms, including cash transactions and bulk cash smuggling, trade-based money-laundering, international bank transfers through legal businesses and nominee bank account holders, are key to advancing the objectives of criminal organisations. Organised criminal groups3 engage in corruption to accomplish their aims by bribing public officials to obtain information on the movement of animals or patrols, to acquire illegitimate licences or permits to give illegal wildlife products the veneer of legitimacy and to allow illegal specimens to pass through checkpoints or avoid seizure. Further, offenders may attempt to pay law enforcement officials to disrupt or close criminal investigations to circumvent any consequences associated with their illegal activities. Currently, there is a noticeable lack of financial investigations related to wildlife and forest crime cases. As such, the information about how criminals extract the profits from wildlife and forest crimes, and the identities of the main financial beneficiaries of those crimes, remains limited. The result of this is that low-level criminals, such as poachers, are caught and prosecuted, leaving the more senior members of criminal groups and actual beneficiaries of these crimes free to continue their illicit activities. A greater understanding of the financial aspects will allow for more effective prosecutions that target those that use corruption to facilitate wildlife and forest crime, and thereby disrupt organised criminal groups.

This Case Digest was created to fill this information gap by providing data on actual cases from Africa, Asia and Latin America and thereby generate more knowledge of financial flows associated with the illegal wildlife trade and what payment mechanisms are used by those perpetrating the crime .  

Cambridge, UK: TRAFFIC International, 2020. 120p.