Mbongeni Mguni
March
25, 2015
(Bloomberg) -- Thirty-one governments
ranging from China to Zambia agreed to
strengthen laws to clamp down on the illegal wildlife trade, which is
worth $10 billion a
year.
"We will pursue organized criminal networks involved in the illegal
wildlife trade,” the
governments said in a
statement released on Wednesday at a conference in Kasane,
Botswana. Steps will be taken "with regard to the detection of money
laundering and
other financial crime connections with
illegal wildlife trade.”
The countries agreed
to amend legislation to treat wildlife trade crimes as predicate
offenses, meaning that they are considered to be connected to
money laundering. That
would make the crimes
easier to prosecute.
"The commitment to follow the money
is a huge, innovative step that provides
a
mechanism to bring down the trafficking
kingpins by hitting them where it hurts - in their
pockets,” said Steven Broad,
executive director of TRAFFIC, a non governmental
organization that monitors wildlife trade.
Botswana has the world's biggest
populations of elephants and borders South Africa,
where poaching of rhinos has surged to record levels. Elephant ivory
and rhino horns
are in demand in Asian
countries such as China and Vietnam where the growing middle
class is boosting demand for illegal wildlife products. Rhino
horn powder is believed to
cure cancer in east
Asia.
"China is an interesting player in all this and the
skyrocketing demand for illegal wildlife
has come from
the growing middle class there,” Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of
Wildlife Conservation
at the World Wildlife Fund said in an interview from New York.
"How do we persuade that middle class? that's where there's a lot of work
to do.”
Vietnam also attended the
conference.
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