Chapter 2 - Identifying Illegal Wildlife Trade Risks

Question 1

Definition of a supply chain (UNODC)

Answer 1

Set of actors involved in flows of:
- products
- services
- information (**interesting**)
- finances
from the SOURCE to the END CUSTOMER

Question 2

There are multiple

Answer 2

1. Layers and
2. Levels
   of
3. Interactions and
4. Transactions.

Question 3

LEVEL 1

Answer 3

• Poachers in source countries
• Motivation income or political act - curious
• receive the smallest share
• may be paid through bartering
• earn varying sums depending on difficulty in finding animal, species involved, and point of origin

Question 4

LEVEL 2

Answer 4

• Local facilitators/fixers who buy directly from poachers
• may work to fulfill set orders and specialize in delivering the products to the exporter
• high use of cash, cheque, money transfer services and mobile money payments - epesa in E Africa
• rapid movements of funds
• structuring deposits just under the suspicious transaction reporting threshold

Question 5

LEVEL 3 and 4

Answer 5

• EXPORTERS and IMPORTERS
  Drivers: Profit and financial gain
  Facilitators: Corrupt officials
• individuals are likely to be part of organized crime groups
• often operate through front companies
• work with specialist packers and shippers to sneak things through in legitimate-seeming shipments
• actors maintain contacts in ports and custom authorities to get help sneaking things through, falsified or fraudulent documents
• Items shipped through circuitous routes to obscure true origins of shipment

Money:

• increasing use of various money value transfer systems (MVTS) including licensed systems and informal systems based on money brokers (rather than use cash). Example: Hawala, fei chen (flying money) or hundi.
• At this stage they rely on bank transfers, cash, mobile or social media-based payments, third party payments
• • in some cases nominee accounts facilitate bank transfers where the locals in source, transit or destination countries serve as a front for the true bank account owner (this I need help understanding)
• • In other cases, legitimate companies are used to hide the movement through commingling with licit funds

Question 6

LEVEL 5

Answer 6

• destination
• may be processed through wholesalers, to retailers, to customers
• last step may include some specific fenegeling/final covering of the tracks - people might cross borders to where the law doesn’t apply and bring them back. some businesses will try to keep transactions national by having accounts in the same country as the buyer

Interesting:
- movement of dead v living animals is different because the latter requires animal care specialists

Question 7

Hotspots/trade routes:

Pangolin

Answer 7

Africa (West and Central)
»>
China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand, Laos

Question 8

Hotspots/trade routes:

Ivory

Answer 8

Africa (West, Central, and South)
»>
China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand, Laos

Question 9

Hotspots/trade routes:

Cheetah (growing concern)

Answer 9

Horn of Africa
»>
Middle East

Question 10

Hotspots/trade routes:

Parrot

Answer 10

West Africa
»>
Turkey

Question 11

Hotspots/trade routes:

Parrot

Answer 11

West Africa
»>
Turkey

Question 12

Hotspots/trade routes:

Eel

Answer 12

Europe
»>
Asia

Question 13

Hotspots/trade routes:

Reptile

Answer 13

South America
&
Australia

Question 14

Hotspots/trade routes:

Shark Fin

Answer 14

South America
»>
US»China

Question 15

Hotspots/trade routes:

Timber

Answer 15

Everywhere
»>
Asia

Question 16

Involved entities

Answer 16

1. Initial poachers
2. Collectors
3. Coordinators (curious)
4. Customs officers
5. Freight agents
6. Money changers
7. Buyers
8. Investors

Question 17

Money movement

Answer 17

Payments occur in cycles and schedules

Profits are immediately recycled and reinvested into subsequent shipments

Once product is delivered to final destination country:
$$ –> Chinese bank accounts
Then $$ –> money changer in the source country
Then, money changer distributes $$ to the collector(s) in USD

1. Poacher - already paid
2. Collector - paid at the end
3. Customs officers - during for one-off bribes
4. Freight agent - also one-offs?
5. Coordinators - ?

Need to factor in one off payments like bribes

Question 18

IWT Supply Chain