Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade (35 page)

12 June 2011

Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Bangkok

Chai boards a Thai Airways flight to Johannesburg. It’s been six months since he was last in South Africa. He hefts his laptop bag into the overhead luggage bin and takes his seat.

He’s not travelling alone. There are five others. They are a motley lot. One or two look like peasants, while the rest could pass for students or backpackers. Hunting permits have been arranged for them in South Africa. Soon another ten rhino horns will be on their way to Thailand and Laos.

The plane taxis along the runway and thunders into the sky. Nine thousand kilometres away in Johannesburg, a cellphone rings. ‘He’s on his way,’ a voice says. ‘He’ll be at the airport tomorrow – flight 703.’

The SARS men have been waiting patiently for their quarry. Weeks have passed. Six flights have come and gone. But still they wait.

The operation is code-named ‘Project Sayam’. It is being run by Charles van Niekerk, an operational specialist in SARS’s tax and customs investigations division, and Lindsay Mudaly, a senior investigator.

For the past few weeks, the two have busied themselves checking and rechecking every facet of Paul O’Sullivan’s report on the syndicate. From the documents it is clear that Chai is the lynchpin in Xaysavang’s South African operations.

In several instances, including the order for fifty ‘sets’ of rhino horn, he is listed as a director of the company. A ‘confirmation letter’, apparently signed by Vixay Keosavang in Laos and imprinted with his personalised stamp, describes Chai as the ‘manager’ in charge of purchasing ‘zoo animal(s)’ in South Africa. In his statement to O’Sullivan, Johnny Olivier referred to Chai as the ‘leader’ and the man who ‘handled all the cash transactions’.

‘He seemed to me to be a powerful individual,’ he had told the Irishman.

According to Johnny, Chai has been involved in the ‘wildlife business’ since his early twenties. He was born in Tak, an agricultural and strategic military region in northern Thailand on the border with Myanmar, in September 1968. Chai owns at least two properties in Thailand, including one in an upmarket gated community in Bangkok, which he shares with his girlfriend, Muy Namsang.

Chai is a collector of sorts: he fancies Rolex watches, Apple gadgets and custom-made Infinity handguns with garish pistol grips. He also has a penchant for Hennessy cognac, Krong Thip 90 cigarettes and Smith & Wesson ammunition. And he loves gambling. It is not uncommon for him to blow R30 000 (about $3 500) a night in a casino. This he does for relaxation. Over-priced cars are another vice. In Thailand he has a white BMW 520d and a sporty metallic-grey Nissan 370Z, which his girlfriend has appropriated. In South Africa, it is the Hummer – a dead brand that even yuppies with money to burn have forsaken.

But there are two key details that emerge from Johnny’s statement. The
first is that Chai obsessively photographs everything, from the hunts to the pay-offs. Wherever he goes, he takes a camera. Perhaps it is his way of keeping records. The second is the fact that Chai ‘always’ carries a Sony laptop around with him.

‘If this computer was obtained, I believe investigators would have everything,’ Johnny had said.

13 June 2011

The arrivals terminal at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg is stirring. Red-eyed passengers filter groggily through the airport. Outside, the brittle, black cold of a Highveld winter awaits them.

It is 7.16 a.m. Thai Airways flight 703 touches down early. Inside the airport, Chai takes the lead as the men follow the signs and conveyor belts to the immigration counters. The two SARS investigators are waiting. They bide their time, observing the Thais from a distance. Chai hands his passport to an immigration officer. Partially concealed behind a pillar, one of the SARS men hastily snaps a photograph. Blurred by bad light, movement and nerves, the image shows Chai, dressed in black, with the five Thais clustered close behind him.

Once they have cleared immigration, Chai detours into a duty-free shop near the baggage carousels and emerges with a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky. The rest collect the bags. They head for the green customs channel – they have nothing to declare. The SARS men are there ahead of them, eyeing their prize – the laptop bag under Chai’s arm.

Chai is taken aside and questioned. The laptop is confiscated and sealed in an evidence bag. A cellphone, camera and some documents are also seized. The SARS men have no interest in arresting Chai just yet. They let him go, along with his five companions.

Meanwhile, in the arrivals hall, Punpitak Chunchom and another Thai
man, Phichet Thongphai, are spotted by undercover cops. They are waiting patiently for Chai and the others to emerge. The Hummer is parked outside. The cops question the two men. Then, together with SARS investigators, they escort them out of the airport and follow them to the Edenvale house. Chai and his hunting party are left stranded at the airport.

A search of the property turns up another laptop, a pile of documents and a small quantity of lion bones – primarily teeth and claws. Neither Punpitak nor Phichet has a permit for the bones. They are promptly arrested. Two weeks later they will plead guilty to contraventions of environmental legislation, receive fines of R10 000 each and be ordered to leave South Africa.

The SARS Computer Forensics Lab is situated in a nondescript corner of a sprawling office block in Sunninghill, Johannesburg. It is the most advanced laboratory of its kind in South Africa. Banks of computer screens line a sterile, climate-controlled room with anti-static flooring. The walls are reinforced with steel, and a steel grid runs through the ceiling. It is designed in such a way that if there is a fire, suppressant gas will be dispersed automatically from vents throughout the laboratory to smother the flames.

Insulated from the network that runs through the rest of the building is a computer server in which case files and evidence collected by the lab’s analysts is stored. Biometric fingerprint readers ensure that only the five people authorised to use the laboratory have access to the server room. Next to it is a workshop where computer hard drives are removed from confiscated laptops and desktops before their data is ‘imaged’.

Along a wall are a number of hard-shell plastic cases, inside of which is an array of forensic gadgetry, connectors and adaptors that allow the analysts to copy any computer drive and extract data from virtually any mobile phone or tablet. Perhaps the most important tool is a ‘write blocker’.

As with the investigation of any crime scene, evidence has to be preserved and then analysed. Here, the crime scene is a hard drive, memory stick, back-up disk or cellphone, and the evidence is in bits and bytes, ones and
zeroes. Every time you switch on a computer, data is modified. If you copy files to other drives, key file information such as dates and times can often change. For digital evidence to be accepted in court, it is vital that the original drive is preserved as it was when the suspect last used it. Also, any ‘images’ of that drive have to be exact, down to the very last digit.

A write blocker does just that. Once a hard drive is removed from a computer, it is plugged into the device and ‘imaged’ onto another drive. The write blocker prevents any new data from being written to either the original drive or the duplicate image. This ensures that the evidence isn’t modified or damaged in any way and remains ‘forensically sound’.

It is here that Chai’s laptop is sent to be analysed. Johnny was right. The laptop has ‘everything’ the investigators need: emails, hunting permits, waybills, receipts, video clips, and hundreds of photographs documenting rhino horn, lion bone and ivory transactions. Among them are dozens of images of Thai ‘hunters‘ posing with rhino carcasses, of rhino horns being cut, weighed and crated, of elephant tusks lined up on a tile floor, of neatly arranged sets of lion bones, claws and teeth. There is Punpitak, clutching a bloodied horn, Chai leaning nonchalantly against the hulking mass of a dead rhino or mugging for his computer’s webcam with his collection of pistols. There are photos of pay-offs and bundles of cash piled high on tables. There’s Chai and Punpitak and the rest of the gang at the casino with the Hummer, and Chai in Thailand in orange Buddhist robes.

Chai is arrested on 9 July 2011, shortly after he returns to Johannesburg with the hunting party. Five rhinos have been shot. There was little the investigators could do to intervene, as the hunting permits were valid. Chai initially pleads guilty to ten counts relating to contraventions of the Customs and Excise Act and admits in a statement that he is a director of Xaysavang Trading, a company that ‘engages in the dealing of rhino horn and lion bones, teeth and claws’. He also admits that he instructed ‘the export of the rhino horns indicated in the counts to which I pleaded guilty’. Later, when it becomes clear that prosecutors intend to pursue other charges, he withdraws the plea. His lawyer tells
the court that his plea was made in the mistaken belief that he would receive a fine and be allowed to return home.

On 4 November 2011, having been lured back to South Africa with the promise of more deals, Punpitak Chunchom is arrested at OR Tambo. Four days later, Marnus Steyl hands himself over to the police. I had spoken to him briefly in July, shortly before publishing a series of articles exposing the syndicate’s activities. ‘You can write what you want,’ he had said over the phone. ‘We know our things are in order.’