The Sunday News
By Heidi Vogt
MOMBASA (Kenya) — When Singaporean authorities seized a near-record four tonnes of ivory hidden inside containers of tea in May, its origin was familiar: the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
Stretched along the Indian Ocean coast, East Africa’s biggest port has quietly emerged as the world’s major transit point for ivory, organisations that track illicit wildlife trade say. As the African elephant population falls to historic lows, tusks are exiting Mombasa in record numbers — secreted in containers of dried fish, buried in chilli powder or wedged inside vats of shea butter.
The ivory trade, propelled by surging demand from Asia’s swelling middle class, is enriching African poachers, gangsters and corrupt officials. Two of the biggest ivory seizures in Asia this year originated in Mombasa, but Kenyan authorities haven’t seized any ivory there for almost 18 months.
The situation is so grave that conservationists and security agencies say Mombasa has become a key intersection of supply, demand and corruption fuelling the ivory trade and a major battleground in the rush to save Africa’s elephant population.
“What you end up with is alliances between the transnational syndicates and the economic and political elite,” said Tom Milliken of the London-based group Traffic, which tracks illegal wildlife trade. He said more ivory has left Kenya than any other country since 2009.
Smugglers’ control of the port trade is undercutting efforts to reduce poaching in Kenya and lessen the lure of ivory products in Asia. Traffickers are increasingly routing Tanzanian tusks through Uganda and into Kenya for shipment out of Mombasa.
It will be difficult to loosen the chokehold: A massive amount of cargo is transiting through a port designed to handle much less and regional efforts to simplify regulation have opened new loopholes for illicit trade. Existing smuggling networks accustomed to moving drugs or guns are primed to expand into ivory, while many otherwise legitimate businessmen that import legal products are spending profit on ivory for the return trip.
Central Africa lost 64 percent of its elephants in the decade to 2012, while Tanzania lost 60 percent in the past five years, according to studies. In the five years to June 2014, international authorities seized about 170 tons of ivory trafficked by transnational organised-crime networks — that represents as many as 230 000 elephants, more than half of Africa’s current population, according to a report by US. groups Born Free and C4ADS.
“Right now, we’re seeing more elephants killed in Africa than we’ve ever seen in history,” said Ginette Hemley, head of wildlife conservation for the Washington-based World Wildlife Fund.
The news comes despite the market price for ivory decreasing to about $1 200 a kilogramme this year from $2 100 last year, according to surveys by ivory-trade researchers Esmond Martin and Lucy Vigne. But poachers are poor people, Mr Martin said: “If the price of ivory were to go down 50 percent, they would still do it.”
Two major Asian seizures this year that originated in Mombasa spotlight the port’s centrality to the ivory trade. In April, Thai authorities seized 3,6 tons of ivory in containers labelled as Kenyan tea. In May, Singaporean authorities seized four tons of ivory valued at about $8 million — the second-largest ivory seizure in the country’s history — in tea containers.
Kenyan officials acknowledge that kickbacks and bribes at Mombasa’s port have long been a problem, but say calls for overhauls from the president’s office and improved surveillance are positive steps.
Bernard Osero, a spokesman for the Kenya Ports Authority, said Mombasa had gone “highly electronic” in recent years to identify illicit material: installing 600 surveillance cameras, alarms with motion detectors, fingerprint scanners and dogs to sniff out drugs and ivory. Mr Osero said the big seizures in Asia were because of a loophole, subsequently closed, that exempted tea containers from being scanned.
But those profiting from the illicit trade say it is very much continuing.
One customs worker who gave his name as Khalfan said he regularly receives payments as high as 500 000 Kenyan shillings (about $4 900) to ensure containers pass without inspection. He said the payment is one of dozens totaling some five million shillings needed to transit the entire port. Mr Khalfan, who officially makes $400 a month, drives a BMW and has bought property in a nearby beach resort town.
The only time a container is stopped, he said, is when the right amount of money doesn’t get to the right people. Bribes range from cloak-and-dagger meetings at public beaches where an envelope changes hands to men handing off money and paperwork inside the port, right under the supposedly ever-watchful security cameras, Mr Khalfan said.
Port workers say smugglers and corrupt officials bypass surveillance by falsifying records and cherry-picking specific containers to wave past scanners that could detect contraband. Mombasa’s port has just one fixed scanner and two mobile scanners. On some days, the line of trucks loaded with containers waiting to be scanned is nearly 13 miles long, said a Kenyan investigator.
And though tea — one of Kenya’s top exports — i s now subject to scans, workers say tea containers are rarely checked. Tea exporters, a powerful lobbying group, have argued that the scans degrade the leaves and that delays risk spoiling a perishable commodity.
“They started that, but it’s not that rigorous,” said Mr Khalfan, with a chuckle.
The testimony was corroborated by another dockworker who gave his name as Sam, who said he receives as much as 40 000 shillings for looking the other way when men load extra bags into tea containers.
Daniel Nzeki, owner of one of many container-freight stations where cargo is loaded, said the problem often starts with customs officials. Many companies have customs agents at their packing plants who pre-approve containers, meaning they are unlikely to go through clearing areas where they would be subject to scanning.
“Suppose you have a factory, maybe a paint factory, and you are assigned a customs to your facility. It is assumed that the goods have been checked and there is no need for an intervention,” Mr Nzeki said.
Kenya’s customs agency didn’t respond to multiple requests to comment.
Some officials working to change the system say the ports are compromised. “The port is run by government people. If they’ve been compromised to the point where they’re dead scared to do anything, what do you do then?” said Richard Leakey, chairman of Kenya’s wildlife agency and a longtime conservationist.
The most commonly prescribed solution is stiff punishment for traffickers. In recent months, authorities in Kenya and Tanzania have proclaimed a series of high-profile arrests: In early October, Tanzanian officials arrested a Chinese woman wildlife groups have dubbed the “ivory queen,” alleged to be one of the region’s more notorious traffickers.
But track records are poor. In Kenya, only 11 percent of the cases against alleged poachers and smugglers result in jail time, said Wildlife Direct, a Kenyan organization that tracks each prosecution.
“The focus has been on poaching because a picture of a dead elephant breaks your heart,” said Wildlife Direct head Paula Kahumbu. “But a picture of a container-load of ivory?”
Prosecutions are also complex because of the transnational coordination needed to gather evidence, and because of the deep pockets of the accused, said Odhiambo Kamlus, a Kenyan police investigator leading the probe into the Singapore seizure. Nine Kenyans were charged for the Thailand seizure, but Mr Kamlus is unsure he will have enough evidence to charge in the Singapore case.
“If you prosecute people who export ivory, they have got money. They will hire the best lawyers. They will be able to drag that case for a very long time,” Mr Kamlus said. — wsj
