EIA at 40 – exposing and dismantling one of the world’s most prolific ivory smuggling syndicates

In the countdown to EIA’s 40th anniversary in September, we are featuring films and stories from our archive, highlighting our work exposing environmental crime and abuse around the world. 

Today, we’re sharing a flashback to a film we made in 2017 to accompany an Elephant Campaign report revealing how criminal gangs originating from an obscure town in southern China were dominating the smuggling of illegal ivory poached from African elephants.

The Shuidong Connection: Exposing the global hub of the illegal ivory trade showed how Shuidong town was home to a network of ivory trafficking syndicates whose reach extended to East and West Africa, including the elephant poaching hotspots of Tanzania and Mozambique.

One syndicate member told undercover EIA investigators that Shuidong was at that time the destination for a staggering 80 per cent of all poached ivory smuggled into China from Africa.

After we shared the results of our findings with Chinese authorities, a large-scale enforcement action based on our intelligence was launched by the local Anti-Smuggling Bureau, in which about 500 officers raided locations in Shuidong and surrounding areas.

We had identified the three main culprits in the syndicate as Wang, Xie and Ou: Wang was caught during the raid and subsequently jailed for 15 years; Xie was located in Tanzania and voluntarily returned to face trial, at which was jailed for six years; Ou was repatriated from Nigeria to China in 2019 under an INTERPOL Red Notice to stand trial.