Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade (36 page)

On 27 March 2012, Tool Sriton is arrested in the parking lot of the Emperors Palace Casino. Finally, on 17 May 2012, Harry Claassens is picked up by police at his farm in North West province. The Thais are kept in custody, the South Africans released on bail.

(At the time of writing, the trial of Chumlong Lemtongthai, Marnus Steyl, Punpitak Chunchom and Tool Sriton had not been finalised. None of the men had pleaded and the evidence against them had yet to be tested in court.)

22 July 2011

I call William. The voice on the phone sounds like it has been steeped in a vat of whisky. Did he and his wife supply Thai strippers to hunt rhinos? I ask. There is a long pause.

‘Well, you got me,’ he says. Another pause. ‘It’s a serious allegation and I know everything about it … My wife did organise women [for them], which is true, but they said they were booking the girls to go with them weekends, you know. They didn’t say they were going to take them for rhino hunting.’

He’s getting angry. Johnny Olivier, he says, ‘is one of the kingpins of the whole fucking set-up. He is the guy who took the girls, took their passports and actually made the permits for the women. And now he is trying to take the blame from him and serve it on somebody else.’

He denies the women are strippers or prostitutes, a claim that seems at odds with his earlier statement that the girls had been ‘booked’. ‘It was some of my wife’s friends, and their husbands and boyfriends didn’t even know about it,’ William continues. ‘They just told them they were taking them
sightseeing for a weekend and they’d give them R5 000 each. When the women came back they said they had been convinced to pose for pictures with the rhinos. They didn’t do any shooting.

‘When I realised what was going on, I told my wife: “You must fucking stop this
kak
and leave these fucking people alone or you’ll pick up
kak
.”’ He claims he reported the matter to the police. ‘In October 2010, when this thing started, I reported it to the cops. I can understand Thai and I smelt something was wrong. The cops did
fokol
.’

After my meeting with Johnny at the Michelangelo Towers, I drive to a shopping mall in Midrand, halfway between Johannesburg and Pretoria. William is waiting for me. Two of the ‘hunters’ want to talk. Outside an Indian restaurant, half a dozen Thai women and their South African husbands and boyfriends are crowded around a table snacking on poppadoms and sambals. William is a bear of a man. He dwarfs his wife, Mau, and the other Thais at the table. One of the hangers-on, a man named Jones, takes the lead in the discussion. They’re pissed off with Johnny, he tells me.

‘The women,’ he says, ‘played cards with William’s wife every weekend.’ She was also friends with Peter, Johnny and Chai. ‘Peter said they had bought a
moerse
share in a farm in Botswana and wanted to do something in tourism for Thai people. They’d fly them in to come and look at the animals. But they said they needed Thais to entertain the tourists, make food for them; all those nice things. They said they’d pay the girls R5 000 each for every tour group that came in. Everyone thought it was a great idea. Even my wife wanted to do it,’ Jones says.

‘They said that because the farm was in Botswana, the women needed to give them copies of their passports so that their visas could be done. When they talked about permits, we thought it was to go over the border. I told my wife it sounds like a smart idea. “You should apply, get your permit sorted and you can also go,” I told her.

‘It was all about tourism for Thai people. There was nothing about prostitution or rhinos.’

Jones says the first group left in October 2010. A second group followed them a few weeks later. ‘Then the girls came back with these photos of rhinos and horns and all those
lekker
things.’

William, who has been listening intently to the conversation, interjects. ‘When I saw those pictures, I told Mau I’d kick her dead if she ever sends people again. And I said I don’t want those people [the men from Xaysavang] at my place again, because I’d seen what was going on. Those trophies never went to the girls.

‘Now I’m hearing my wife and I are involved in human trafficking. It’s a
kak
story. Six years ago, I managed a club above Teazers in Midrand. And Johnny probably thought I was still involved with those things. The so-called prostitutes he mentions in his statement always come to my house on Saturdays to sit and play cards with my wife and make Thai food.’

As an afterthought, he adds: ‘I always eat out. I don’t eat what they make. The girls knew nothing about hunting permits. I also didn’t know. I didn’t even know about the copies and everything.’

Jones continues: ‘William said to me these guys are busy with fucking smuggling. Just stay out of it.’

William calls one of the Thai women closer. Her nickname is Wi, she says hesitantly. She won’t tell me her real name and says she fears reprisals from the Thai authorities. She has reason to be afraid. Her face appears in several photographs the SARS investigators lifted from Chai’s laptop. In one she poses nonchalantly with a rifle next to the carcass of a rhino. She’s wearing jeans, a cap and a T-shirt with an image of a unicorn rearing up. The rifle takes her to her shoulder. She grins at the camera. In others, Steyl stands behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

William’s wife moves closer, as does another woman, called Nit, who acts as translator. ‘Johnny and Peter tell me we going to take you on holiday to visit farm and go see animal. I never see big farm before.’ She only heard the shots, she says. Then she was driven to where the rhino had fallen. ‘I see the rhino but I don’t know if it is dead or alive. It was the first time I see a real rhino. Before, only on TV in Thailand.’

She was handed the rifle and told to go and stand next to the animal. She remembers the rifle being heavy and difficult to hold. ‘I felt sad,’ she says. ‘Why they kill them, why they kill such a big animal?’ But did she smile in the pictures, I ask. She giggles. ‘When you take photo, you have to smile,’ she answers.

Another woman is ushered forward. She says her name is Wan. ‘It was very sad,’ she says of the killing. ‘I cried. I don’t agree with what they did. I think it was wrong to shoot such a big animal.’

Like Wi, she claims she never fired a shot. ‘They make me stand there. I carry rifle on my back. It was very heavy. I feel sorry for rhino.’

A phone rings. I can hear William speaking to someone about Johnny. ‘
Die fokken doos. Ek wil hom dood donder
. (The fucking cunt. I want to beat him to death).’ Both Wi and Wan confirm being paid R5 000 each by Johnny. But they deny they’re prostitutes or strippers.

‘That not true,’ Wi says. ‘Why they tell story like that? Not all Thai lady that come to work here is like that. I’m very angry. The boyfriends are also not happy.’

As I prepare to leave, William leans over. ‘Johnny and Peter did go and get whores. They booked whores in clubs and then they held parties with them and convinced them to go with them.’

The video runs to 25 minutes and 39 seconds. I watch it again and again, looking and listening for details. Play. Pause. Fast forward. Pause. Rewind. There’s Chai, grinning and giving a thumbs-up after he adjusts the camera on Marnus’s head; the boot tracks in the dust, a black fence line, the whispered words and hand signals, the way they move – Claassens expertly rolling his feet to mute the sound of his boots on the ground; the hands that hold the rifles; the flashes of colour from the men’s shirts; the spacing of the shots; the rhino’s penetrating cries.

But it is the Thais I watch most closely: Chai in a black windbreaker, a white, striped shirt and jeans, and the other man – the silent shadow trailing Marnus. Hunting records identify him as Nimit Wongprajan of 166 Moo 2, Vunghenrat Village, Khon Kaen, Thailand, passport number R737660. Wongprajan’s nickname is Pisong. He’s wearing jeans, white tennis shoes and a charcoal-coloured jacket. A cap is pulled low over his eyes.

18.32: Steyl gestures to Nimit to stay down.

18.48: Harry and Steyl, slightly crouched over, leave the tracker and Nimit behind them as they inch forward. Nimit is unarmed.

20.30: Steyl raises, then lowers, a rifle a number of times.

20.58: Steyl fires a shot.

23.57: The rhino lies dying under the tree. Marnus takes off the GoPro and hooks it on his belt. The camera focuses on Nimit. He’s standing in the background, hands empty at his sides.

The bureaucratic details of the hunt are faithfully recorded, the weight of the animal’s horns – four kilograms – the unique numbers of the microchips inserted into them and, most importantly, the permit – number O 21980 – issued to Nimit Wongprajan.

But the footage doesn’t show Nimit firing a single shot.

Other details later slip into place. Nimit’s brother, Nikorn Wongprajan, is an agriculture officer in the flora department at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. Nikorn’s girlfriend, Arunee Senam, works for a cargo-handling company, Bangkok Flight Services, and according to her Facebook page, is also employed by a logistics firm. Hunting records show that hunting permits were issued to both Nikorn and Arunee for rhinos that were shot at Aurora around the time of Nimit’s hunt.

The paper trail from Nimit’s ‘hunt’ – as with most of the others – leads from Steyl to Chai and back again.

In May 2011, Steyl invoices Nimit for R208 000 or $32 000 for the horns. The invoice appears to have been emailed to Chai. Four days later, the money is transferred from a Bangkok bank account held in Chumlong (Chai) Lemtongthai’s name to an account at the Bank of Athens in Johannesburg’s Bedford Centre.

The beneficiary is Steyl Game CC.

Mike Peega was one of the elite in a military regiment that prides itself on the high failure rate of its selection course. Only about 30 per cent of the candidates survive the bone-crushing, soul-sapping tests of character that Special Forces operators call the ‘ultimate challenge’. Most crack under the strain. Some have died. The entry test is gruelling enough: forty push-ups without breaking rhythm, sixty-seven sit-ups in two minutes, a five-kilometre run in twenty-four minutes, and forty six-metre ‘shuttle runs’ in ninety-five seconds.

There is also a battery of psychological and aptitude tests. A hellish six-week pre-selection phase follows in which the candidates are pushed to breaking point six-and-a-half days a week and up to twenty hours a day. The final selection lasts a week and simulates ‘the most extreme physically and mentally stressful conditions that could ever possibly be experienced by a human being’. No sleep, no rest, no food. Any infraction or sign of aggression is an instant cause for disqualification.

Peega survived all that and more over the next fifty-one weeks of training. He was sent to 5 Special Forces Regiment in Phalaborwa, a Lowveld town bordering the Kruger National Park, where summer temperatures easily peak at 47 °C. He gained experience in intelligence gathering, as well as urban and rural reconnaissance.

Then, in March 2007, he applied to join the Customs Border Control Unit (CBCU), a division of SARS. A SARS official who had also served in Special Forces vouched for him, and Peega was hired. He signed a secrecy clause and was assigned to the Special Projects Unit, an investigative division within SARS that would later be renamed, euphemistically, the National
Research Group (NRG). Its focus was on South Africa’s burgeoning ‘illicit economy’ – smuggling and trafficking in drugs, abalone, cars, cigarettes, counterfeit goods, rhino horn and ivory – as well as money-laundering and tax-evasion schemes.

Less than two years later, in December 2008, Peega’s career would come to a shattering end. In hindsight, perhaps it was to be expected. But nobody could ever have predicted the nature of his disgrace or that it would propel him to the heart of a political scandal involving South Africa’s most controversial politician, Julius Malema.