Open and not shut: ivory trafficking court cases in East Africa linked to the Kromah Network
Daniel Stiles
The GI-TOC Risk Bulletin Issue 3 described the recent arrests in 2019 of key members of the two most widespread transnational organized criminal wildlife trade networks operating in Africa, the Kromah and Shuidong networks. These criminal organizations focused on exporting elephant ivory and rhino horn, although other wildlife products were occasionally included. The two networks, which worked in loose cooperation when situations of mutual benefit occurred, supplied most of the ivory and large quantities of rhino horn to the Far East between about 2010 and 2019.
In both network cases, the key actors who were arrested were spirited out of Africa for trial, the Kromah respondents to the United States and the Shuidong accused to China. This was deemed necessary by American and Chinese law enforcement and government officials in order to achieve proper judiciary action. With both networks, there have been significant courtroom successes. In late March 2022, Moazu Kromah, also known as ‘Kampala Man’, kingpin of the eponymous network, pled guilty to three counts of conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking in the Southern District of New York, and in August 2022 he was sentenced to 63 months in prison. In China, Xie Xingbang, Wang Kangwen and nine others belonging to the Shuidong cartel were convicted.
The Risk Bulletin pointed out that the success of the arrests and extraditions was due to the fact that the investigations were driven by non-African countries, the US and China, demonstrating that the countries directly affected by poaching activities of transnational networks have not proven able to successfully build and conclude prosecutions themselves. Kromah had been previously arrested in Kampala in 2017, but the court case went nowhere, remaining in limbo (described in Case #16 below). Across the Eastern and Southern African region, corruption ruins prospects for effective local enforcement of wildlife trafficking laws. In many countries, criminal networks are protected by political figures, sometimes at very high levels, who use their influence to ensure that investigations do not proceed or that prosecutions fail.
It is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether corruption or incompetence was involved in a bungled investigation that fails in court, as the samples of Kromah network court cases in Kenya and Uganda over a ten year period described below will illustrate.
These 17 seizure cases were selected because they represent well how the Kromah network operated, making use of multiple methods of packing and concealing the contraband, different transport routes and methods and how facilitators (clearing agents, export companies, customs officials, port or airport employees, even law enforcement) were compromised to assist in the trafficking operations. These 17 cases are typical of all wildlife organized crime cases in East Africa. These particular large seizure cases were selected also to demonstrate the logistical capabilities of the Kromah network, in which one tonne or more quantities of tusks were gathered from over huge geographical areas of eastern and southern Africa, consolidated in one locality, packed and sent for export. Many smaller seizures are known, usually made during transport to consolidation localities.
What is the conviction rate score in 17 large ivory seizure cases in East Africa from 2010 to 2019?
Case #1–2,194 kg of ivory in two containers shipped from Mombasa seized in Haiphong, Vietnam.
· On 29 April, 2010 the ivory was seized in two containers packed with dried seaweed.
· This was the fifth major seizure of illegal ivory that Customs officers at the port made in the last two years and is one of three major wildlife confiscations in the past month alone.
· Kenya Police later charged an unnamed Kenyan facilitator in a Mombasa court.
· The charge was later withdrawn as the investigators could not produce the physical or oral evidence to confirm the facts of the seizure in Haiphong. The fact that there were no prosecutions in any of the seizures suggests that corruption was at play in Vietnam, but Kenya made little effort on its part as well, not investigating the exporter, clearing agent or anyone else involved in the export.
· This case is linked to Kromah by unpublished information that indicates Frederick Mungule was involved, a Kromah network Mombasa Port clearing agent facilitator involved in Cases #3 and #6–8.
Case #2–2,160 kg Ivory Seizure Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (Kenya)
· On 21 August, 2010, various policing agencies seized ivory and 5 rhino horns packed in 12 wooden boxes at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport destined for Malaysia as air freight.
· To this day, it is believed to have been the largest air freight ivory seizure ever made.
· Kenneth Kamau Maina was charged, based on a witness that testified that Kamau’s ID was used to gain access to the airport to deliver the 12 boxes. Kamau claimed his ID had been stolen that day and was acquitted in 2016.
· Kamau was subsequently arrested in another ivory seizure case, Case #11 below, along with a Guinea national linked to Kromah.
· A second male, Wycliffe Atseste, was also charged but prosecuted separately for reasons unknown. It cannot be confirmed whether he was acquitted or the case was withdrawn, the case file cannot be located on the Kenya Law website.
Case #3–2,033 kg of Ivory from Mombasa seized in Bangkok
· On 30 March, 2011, Thai officials seized a container of frozen mackerel with the ivory hidden amongst it.
· The container is believed to have started its journey in Kampala, Uganda and transited Mombasa Port.
· Two Kenyan clearing agents, Fredrick Sababu Mungule and Edward Muhasa Muta were found to be the facilitators of the shipment. They were never prosecuted.
· In January 2013, ivory seizures in Hong Kong (Case #6), Mombasa (Case #7) and Singapore (Case #8) were all facilitated by Mungule and he was convicted in Cases #6 and #7 and is presently facing charges with Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) accomplices for the Case #8 shipment.
· The vehicles and drivers involved in delivering that ivory to the port were also involved in Mombasa related ivory shipments in March-April 2015 for which there are also charges ongoing in Mombasa. (See Abdurahman Mahmoud Sheikh and others Case #13). This links Mungule and co-accused to the Kromah network.
Case #4–1,478 kg of Ivory destined for Cambodia seized in Mombasa
· On 3 December, 2011 acting on intelligence, Customs Officials and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) seized a consignment of 465 pieces of elephant tusks described as ‘soapstone handicrafts’ packed in 60 well-secured cartons and 8 wooden crates destined for export to Cambodia. KWS stated they had been tracking the container for three weeks.
· The clearing agent, identified as being Calbens Conveyors, was suspended by Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) pending investigations.
· There is no indication that they, or anyone else was ever charged in relation to this seizure.
Case #5–1,500 kg of ivory seized Mombasa, with Dubai as port of destination
· On 21 December, 2011 the KRA scanned a container of apparent waste plastic and found the tusks inside.
· On 16 February, 2012 clearing agent Sammy Ndiririgi Maina was arrested and charged with attempting to export the ivory.
· Witness testimony indicated the involvement of others who were never located or investigated, for example the exporter Jonathan Mungoti. This testimony and submitted exhibits also raised the question of possible complicity by the Kenya Revenue Authority and its Head of Verification James Njagi (see Case #10), but no investigation was made. It is Njagi who links this seizure to the Kromah network.
· At one point, there was a 26 month interlude in the hearing marked by 10 consecutive adjournments for a variety of superficial reasons, such as the prosecutor not being available, one of the court officials declaring he was ill, a scheduled witness having to attend a funeral and so on.
· Maina was acquitted on 15 January, 2019, almost seven years after being charged.
Case #6–1,323 kg of ivory seized in Hong Kong shipped from Mombasa
· On 3 January, 2013 Hong Kong Customs seized a total of 779 ivory tusks from a 20-foot container shipped from Mombasa via Malaysia. Covered by architectural stone plates, the ivory tusks were packed in 40 sacks inside five wooden crates.
· Kenyan Authorities charged Fredrick Sababu Mungule, a clearing agent, James Ngala Kassiwa, a KRA officer, and Gideon Natali Onsinyo Nyangau, a Kenya Ports Authority employee, with facilitating this shipment.
· Frederick Mungule was implicated in Case #3, but not charged.
· This case was merged with Case #7 by the Mombasa court.
Case #7–3,828 kg of ivory seized in Mombasa
· 14 January, 2013 the ivory was found in a container covered in the same flat stones as Case #6 in Mombasa Port. The same three people as Case #6 were charged and the two cases were merged.
· The ship was destined for Batam, Indonesia, but Hong Kong or China was believed to be the final destination.
· Mungule is linked to the Kromah network by being represented by the same law firm as in the cases of Feisal Mohammed Ali (Case #12), the Sheikhs (Case #13) and James Njagi (Cases #5 and #10), plus using the same logistics companies, drivers and vehicles to deliver seized ivory in other cases linked to Kromah not included in these selected example cases.
· They were convicted in March 2022 and sentenced to two years each. They will not appeal.
· This conviction was at the same time that Kromah pled guilty in New York, suggesting that the accused did not appeal because they feared that evidence provided by Kromah’s plea bargain could result in much longer sentences in an appeal procedure.
Case #8–1,833 kg of ivory seized in Singapore shipped from Mombasa
· On 23 January, 2013 the ivory was seized in Singapore, destined for Haiphong, Vietnam, packed in the same type of stones seen in Cases #6 and #7.
· The ivory was transported from Kampala to Mombasa for export.
· The same three people as in Cases #6 and #7 were charged, with the addition of Nelson Ayoo, a Kenya Revenue Authority employee.
· This case was kept separate from Cases #6 and #7 and is dragging on in its ninth year with numerous trivial delays of the types seen in other Kromah network cases. They were all acquitted on February 11, the court ruling that the prosecution had not proved a prima facie case.
· This ivory shipment was repatriated to Kenya in August 2013, ostensibly for trial purposes.
· In 2017, staff of Kenyan NGO, Wildlife Direct, were subject to intimidation and death threats for covering the court proceedings.
Case #9–1,478 kg of ivory seized in Dubai shipped from Mombasa
· On 1st May, 2013, Dubai customs officers located the 1,478 kg of ivory in a container, declared as wooden furniture, during a routine X-ray scan.
· The ivory originated in Kampala and was transported to Mombasa for export to Malaysia.
· It was also found that tusks of two elephants had been separated pre-loading, with two singlets found in this shipment matching two single tusks found in the ivory seizure in Mombasa in Case #7.
· Likewise it was found that three single tusks found in this case directly matched their tusk pairs found in a Mombasa seizure Case #11. This links Cases #6–8 and #11 together and this case to the Kromah network.
· No arrests and no charges were ever filed in this case.
Case #10–1,004 kg of ivory seized in Singapore shipped from Mombasa
· On 25 March, 2014, the ivory, hidden in a cargo of coffee beans, was seized in Singapore, having originated from Kampala and transited through Mombasa Port.
· With assistance from the Freeland Foundation and the Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF), charges were filed in April/May of 2017 against six defendants in a Mombasa court, three years after the seizure.
· During court proceedings it became clear that that this shipment had been the object of interest by the Kenya Directorate of Criminal Investigations and the KRA before the container had been opened in Singapore in March 2014. This information would suggest that at the time, persons within DCI or the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions had declined to proceed with the investigation and prosecution until the intervention by Freeland and the LATF in 2017.
· A witness testified that the ID number of one of the accused, the KRA Head of Verification James Njagi, indicated that he was the one who released the container holding the ivory for shipment. Njagi was suspected but not charged in Case #2. He is represented by the same law firm that represented Feisal Mohammed Ali (Case #12), the Sheikhs (Case #13), Frederick Mungule (Cases #3 and #6–8) and the Akasha brothers, convicted drug traffickers, after their arrest in Mombasa in 2014. It took five years in Mombasa courts before the US authorities managed to transfer the Akasha accused to the New York court, where they pled guilty.
· The prosecution and defense presentations in this case only concluded in late April, 2022, because of numerous delays. The judge ruled a month later that the accused had a case to answer and on 12 September the first sitting will occur.
Case #11–784 kg of ivory seized in a water tanker in Nairobi, Kenya
· On 17 April, 2014, the Special Crime Prevention Unit seized 131 pieces of ivory from a water tanker vehicle parked at a petrol station in Nairobi.
· Kenneth Kamau Maina and Guinean national, N’Faly Doukoure were subsequently arrested. Four accomplices were not found.
· At the time, Kamau had another ivory trafficking charge before the Makadara Courts (Nairobi) for a 2,160 kg seizure in August 2010 (Case #2).
· In January 2015, Doukoure, linked to the Kromah network headquartered in Kampala, Uganda, was ordered deported mid-trial for reasons unknown.
· Since Doukoure’s deportation, information as to case progression for Kamau has not been forthcoming from the court and it is now in the “missing file” category.
· N’Faly Doukoure has been linked to Thomas Muhuro Ngatia who was arrested in 2016 with over 100 kg of ivory in a home rented to ivory and rhino horn trafficker, Fredrick Muchina. Muchina was assassinated in January 2016 and was suspected to run a large elephant and rhino poaching operation located in the Laikipia and Tsavo park areas in Kenya. He may have been linked to the Kromah network, as he visited Uganda and exported from Mombasa and was said to be part of a large trafficking cartel.
Case #12–2,152 kg of ivory seized in Mombasa town, the ‘Kingpin’ Feisal Mohammed Ali case
· On 5 June 5, 2014, the ivory packed in 72 bags was seized by police in a storeroom at Fuji Motors, Mombasa.
· Abdul Salim Omar Sadiq, recognized as Feisal’s right hand man, and Fuji Motors directors Ghalib Sadiq Kara, Praverz Noor Mohamed, Abdul Majeed Ibrahim were arrested and an arrest warrant was issued for Feisal Mohammed Ali, who delivered the ivory to Fuji Motors. He had fled to Tanzania, but was brought back to Kenya in December 2014 by INTERPOL.
· Abdul Sadiq had 56 phone contacts (texts and calls) with Feisal in the space of 4 hours, was found not guilty.
· Furthermore, the three co-accused directors of Fuji Motors Ltd, where the 2.15 tonnes of ivory had been stored for a number of days, were also found not guilty.
· Nineteen months later in July 2016, after intense media scrutiny orchestrated by the NGO Wildlife Direct, who termed Feisal Mohamed Ali an ivory trafficking ‘Kingpin’, he was convicted of being in possession of that ivory and sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined 20 million Kenyan shillings (about US$200 000 at the time).
· In fact, Feisal Mohamed Ali was not a trafficking kingpin, but rather a simple transporter and facilitator with links to both the Kromah network and Akasha drug traffickers.
· The case was plagued with irregularities from the beginning, e.g. the vehicles impounded with the arrests later disappeared, police officers claimed Feisal was being protected, the Chief Inspector who was the lead in this seizure was transferred to the traffic department in a remote area 400 km from Mombasa and there were numerous delays in court proceedings.
· On 3rd August 2018 Feisal was acquitted on appeal. Lady Justice Dora Chepkwony ruled that he should be acquitted for a number of reasons, ranging from constitutional concerns to original trial irregularities. For example, the prosecution produced no evidence linking the truck that Feisal supposedly was driving with the ivory, and no witness testimony or forensic evidence linked Feisal with the ivory.
Case #13–3,127 kg of ivory seized in Bangkok shipped from Mombasa
· On 25 April, 2015 the ivory was found in a shipment of tea leaves destined for Laos.
· The clearing agent was Siginon Freight Services Limited, owned by a son of former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, and the exporter was Potential Quality Supplies, run by brothers Nicholas and Samuel Jefwa.
· Subsequent investigation led to charges against nine individuals:
o Abdurahman Mahmoud Sheikh aka Said Juma Said
o Sheikh Mahmoud Abdurahman
o Mahmoud Abdurahman Sheikh
o Lucy Muthoni Kahoto (KRA)
o Musa Jacob Lithare
o Samuel Mbote Mundia (associate of Jefwa’s, taxi driver)
o Salim Mohamed Juma Khamisi (driver for Abdurahman Mahmoud Sheikh)
o Abbasi Issa Rashid (driver for Sheikh’s)
o Kenneth Mwangi Njunga (Njuguna) (lorry driver)
· Warrants were issued for two brothers who were alleged to be the prime logisticians:
o Nicholas Mweri Jefwa
o Samuel Bakari Jefwa
· The Jefwa brothers have been on the run and on the INTERPOL Red Notice list since October 2016 and not yet apprehended. There are reports from several unrelated sources that they are being protected by a high level politician.
· There were phone numbers in seized cell phones linked to Moazu Kromah and the Kenya the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) stated that it has received intelligence from the US justice system linking the Sheikhs to the Kromah cartel and that the US believed that the cartel was behind the ivory shipment to Thailand.
· Thailand alleged that much of the ivory had been previously seized in Thailand and returned to Kenya and re-exported, which Kenya disputes.
· This trial has been plagued with delays, typical of major Kenyan wildlife prosecutions and is now in its seventh year.
· The ODPP tried to introduce new evidence provided by the US government in May 2021 that linked the Sheikhs directly with Kromah. After more than a year of unexplained delays, the Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji withdrew the request.
· Proceedings indicate that since 23 June, 2015, this case has had over 50 sittings, not including those relating to asset forfeiture. Most adjournments were at the request of the prosecution. The court sat 29 times before the first witness testified, two years and two months from the first arrests. The case continues.
Case #14–4,600 kg of ivory seized in Singapore shipped from Mombasa
· On 16 May, 2015, Singapore authorities seized a container declared as tea leaves but found to contain 1,783 pieces of ivory, five rhino horns and 23 lion’s teeth total weight weighing approximately 4,600 kg (reported in media as 3,364 kg). It was destined for Vietnam.
· Siginon Freight Services was the clearing agent and Potential Quality Supplies was the exporter, as in Case #13, linking these two cases.
· There were no charges ever brought in Kenya for this seizure, but Xie Xingbang, member of the Shuidong cartel, was charged and convicted as the buyer for this seizure in China and was sentenced to six years.
· This seizure and Case #14 indicate that both Kromah and Shuidong cartels were utilizing the same facilitators in Mombasa to export their illegal wildlife products. Was Kromah supplying Shuidong?
Case #15–1,097 kg of ivory seized in Mombasa
· On 21 December, 2016, Kenyan law enforcement seized the ivory hidden in hollow wooden logs sealed with wax and declared as ceramics bound for Cambodia via Singapore.
· Many of the pieces of ivory had CITES red ink marks — an indication that they had previously been seized. This ivory was subsequently identified as leaked from a Burundi government stockpile.
· The consignment originated from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), passed through South Sudan and crossed into Uganda through the border point at Elegu by truck. According to the Bill of Lading, the place of delivery was indicated by the exporter as Sihanoukville in Cambodia and country of origin was indicated as the DRC.
· Lukhiza Limited, registered in South Sudan, was one of the exporters, once controlled by the same son of President Moi who owns Siginon Freight Services, seen in Cases #14 and #15.
· Ephantus Gitonga Mbare was charged on 23 December, 2016 at a Mombasa Court with two counts of illegal wildlife trade
· The case was concluded on 25 April, 2019 and Ephantus Mbare was acquitted. The court indicated that there were poor investigations and the real culprits were not brought before the court.
Case #16–1,303 kg of ivory seized in a Kampala home of Moazu Kromah
· On 17 February, 2017, members of Ugandan investigative NGO, Natural Resource Conservation Network (NRCN), and with Ugandan authorities, raided a home in Kampala to find the ivory, cutting equipment and various packaging materials.
· Three men were arrested, Moazu Kromah, born in Liberia, as well as his two sons Mohamed Kourouma and Kourouma Bangaly, from Guinea.
· The raid and subsequent seizure were the result of more than two years investigation and international collaboration, involving primarily the NGO EAGLE, of which NRCN was then a part.
· Undercover investigators were setting a up a buy of rhino horn with Bangaly Kourouma. Kourouma was wanted at the time on a Ugandan arrest warrant for possessing a small amount of ivory one year previous while negotiating a multi-tonne deal.
· The second son, Mohamed Kourouma, had been previously arrested and charged (later acquitted) in Kenya while ferrying ivory to Mombasa and in the company of the nephew of Mahmoud Abdulrahman Sheikh. Sheikh is presently before the courts in Case #14.
· Besides the seized ivory, the 2017 raid yielded evidence of previous ivory shipments totalling thousands of kilogrammes of ivory and rhino horn with one of the buyers listed as Vixay Keosavang of Laos, wanted by U.S. Fish and Wildlife with a US$1 million reward on this head, and Vannaseng Trading, another Laotian trafficking operation, illegally provided Moazu Kromah with US$190 000 between 2014 and 2017.
· The intelligence gained from multiple mobile phones and packaging materials showed supply connections to ivory and rhino horn seizures in made in Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Togo, Mozambique and Kenya.
· Some of the seized ivory had markings consistent with the CITES markings of the Burundi stockpile seen in Case #16. This leaked Burundi ivory has been found thus far in six seizure cases.
· Moazu Kromah and three others were extradited to the US in 2019, and Kromah pled guilty and was sentenced in 2022, as described in the introduction.
· The Ugandan authorities started a prosecution of this case, but it is in limbo and the whereabouts of Kromah’s sons is unknown.
Case #17–3,299 kg of ivory and 424 kg of pangolin scales seized in Kampala
· On 24 January, 2019, acting on intelligence, Ugandan authorities stopped a truck on the Kampala outskirts carrying a container of teak logs.
· The contraband was found inside hollowed out logs sealed with wax, as seen in Case #15, enroute to Mombasa for export to Vietnam.
· A Vietnamese man, Pham Van Chien, was arrested with the container.
· 16 other Vietnamese in Uganda were also arrested following investigations, including Thai Xuan Tuan, who in August 2018 was arrested at Entebbe airport with 23.4 kg of rhino horn preparing to fly to Vietnam. He had travelled by road from Kenya. It is not known what happened to his court case but he was subsequently permitted to leave Uganda, only to return again to traffic ivory and rhino horn.
· Part of this shipment contained ivory known to have come from the Burundi ivory stockpile.
· A tusk in this shipment was a direct match with a tusk in Case # 16, suggesting that Kromah is linked with the Vietnamese.
· Four of the Vietnamese were eventually charged in this case, but in the years that followed the case faced endless delays and obstacles. As hearings were repeatedly postponed, the prosecution process crumbled, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic but also because interpreters were unavailable and court officials were committed elsewhere. The defendants, released on bail, absconded and prosecutors were compelled to adjourn the case indefinitely pending their re-arrest.
Discussion
These 17 large ivory seizure cases linked to Kenya and/or Uganda all display a high degree of faults in the investigation, prosecution and judiciary processes. The ivory seized totals over 35 tonnes, a fraction of the ivory produced from the approximately 100,000 elephants poached during this period.
On the law enforcement side, some of the main weaknesses have been the fact that obvious suspects were often not investigated or charged, leads were not followed by investigators, evidence was often not collected or, if it was, not produced in court by prosecutors, chain of evidence procedures were not followed by the police, known witnesses were not called by prosecutors and questioning of witnesses in the courtroom by prosecutors often avoided asking pertinent questions. The prosecution also contributed to courtroom delays by appearing at a sitting unprepared, without scheduled witnesses being present, declarations of illness, change in prosecutors with a request of two months or more for the new prosecutor to “come up to speed” on the case and so on, which resulted in numerous stays and rescheduling. In none of the cases have the true owners of the ivory been established, as if that were an unimportant detail.
The judiciary side has also displayed failings by calling for postponements of sittings, reschedulings, changes of venue, changes in magistrates/judges and so on, extending the periods of trials commonly for more than five years. There have also been questionable rulings, for example Case #2, in which the accused was acquitted on the grounds that his ID had been stolen and used by the person who delivered the ivory to the airport. Then who did deliver the ivory using Kamau’s ID? The four accused with Feisal in Case #12 were acquitted, in spite of the fact that Sadiq was found on the premises when the ivory was seized, and had numerous phone calls with Feisal immediately after the seizure.
A summary of the case outcomes is:
In Kenya:
No prosecution — #3, #4, #9, #14
Case withdrawn– #1
Acquittal — #2, #5, #8, #12, #15
Conviction — #6, #7 (same case)
In process/unknown — #2, #10, #11, #13
In Uganda
In process/unknown — #16, #17
Out of 15 large ivory seizure cases in Kenya there has been only one conviction of three people, sentenced to only two years in prison in connection with two of the seizures totalling over 5,100 kg of ivory. This case was only concluded in 2022 after nine years of court delays for various reasons, and almost simultaneously with Moazu Kromah’s guilty plea in New York. The two Uganda cases, both linked to Kromah, are status ‘in process/unknown’, but there seems little indication that a successful prosecution will be the outcome.
These ivory seizure case examples illustrate well why the American and Chinese authorities felt compelled to extradite key transnational organized crime associates controlling the poaching of elephants and rhinos and the trafficking of the products out of Africa. They realized that a proper judiciary process and outcome was most likely not possible in Africa.
These 17 cases are only a sample of 102 ivory seizures up to 2019 documented by Chris Morris, who has worked in the WildlifeDirect Eyes in the Courtroom project and with the Samuel Wasser DNA identification team based at the University of Washington, USA. The results of the DNA tusk analyses over the years have been published in a number of papers, the latest one summarizing the results of analysis of 49 large seizures totalling 111 tonnes of ivory shipped out of Africa between 2002 and 2019. Using geographic source origin of seized tusks in each seizure and the matching of single tusks from a pair linked to the same elephant found in different seizures, the Wasser team has concluded that there have been only two or three large ivory trafficking networks operating out of Africa located in different cities, using shifting ports (air and sea), with a great deal of connectivity between them. The Kromah cartel appears to have been the largest and most widespread of these networks.
The Basel Institute was given access to cell phone downloads seized in various Kromah cartel arrests. They conducted a social network analysis of hundreds of calls and messages and found there to be 495 nodes in the Kromah network, with Kampala Man at the centre.
Members, or nodes, of the network were located primarily in East and West Africa and Southeast Asia, but also in Central Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America. It is probable that the Vietnamese arrested in Case #17 and those arrested in trafficking in Lagos, Nigeria, are members of the Kromah network.
What now?
