Africa Wild

Ex-SABC reality show top 10 finalist gets three years for perlemoen poaching role

From Superstar to jailbird

BY DEVON KOEN - 03 May 2019

A perlemoen poacher and ex-TV show singing contestant who was so afraid of prison that he tried to skip his trial, saw his nightmare become reality on Thursday when he was jailed for three years – and had to forfeit his R45,000 bail for absconding.

This article is reserved for HeraldLIVE subscribers.

Sorry, but I'm not a subsciber

Two suspects arrested with abalone in Worcester

WESTERN CAPE - The endeavours of SAPS to tackle the illegal abalone trade in the Western Cape resulted in the arrest of two suspects aged 32 and 39 for the possession of abalone on Friday, 14 June 2019, in Worcester.

At about 20:00 information was operationalized in a joint venture between Crime Intelligence and members attached to K9 Unit in Worcester, when information was followed up of abalone in a bus that was traveling from Cape Town destined for Gauteng.

At Worcester the identified bus was stopped at a petrol filling station and searches were conducted. Members were assisted by sniffing dogs who found eight brown boxes that were wrapped in plastics, containing dried abalone. When counted, 2 236 units of dried abalone worth an estimated street value of R800 000-00 were confiscated, and two suspects were arrested.

The suspects are expected to appear at Worcester Magistrate Court on Tuesday, 18 June 2019, on charges of possession of abalone.

22.06.2019 | Ofir Drori (Facebook)



Cameroon - a trafficker arrested in Douala with about 100 kg pangolin scales in a continued crackdown on the trafficking syndicate operating between Cameroon and the Central African Republic. Good work of the LAGA team with the Cameroonian authorities.

Poaching used as political weapon

Writer: John Grobler | June 18, 2019

A decade of debilitating mismanagement of South Africa’s fisheries sector under former President Jacob Zuma has driven the illicit abalone industry in the Western Cape deep into the arms of Chinese transnational organised crime, seemingly for political purposes. This was established by an 18-month-long and ongoing investigation by JOHN GROBLER.

rom a cottage industry 10 years ago, the abalone-for-drugs trade has grown into a multi-billion dollar component of international organised crime, with South Africa’s most notorious gangs now controlling the poaching and nine Chinese triads the international trade into Hong Kong by using an ancient trade-based financial settlement system known as “Chinese Flying Money” or fei qian (Mandarin) or fei ch’ien (Cantonese).

This financial system is what ultimately identifies the abalone and drugs racket as Chinese organised transnational crime. Both the Chinese and the local syndicate launder their money by preference via properties, bought via front companies or in the name of other relatives and sometimes very cheaply, as payments in a non-linear fashion.

Neither ever get caught and appear deeply embedded in South Africa and China, with political contacts reaching into the highest echelons of power in both South Africa and China. None of this is really news, but the extent to which local and international crime has been able to integrate abalone and drugs into a vertically-integrated business model by exploiting South Africa’s fragile race politics, is.

The Numbers

On the white-sanded beaches and craggy bays from Cape Agulhas to Cape Columbine, the word is that The Numbers, the prison-based gang of the 26s, 27s and 28s, are now in charge. On certain days, whatever comes out of the sea ̶ abalone, lobster, periwinkle ̶ belongs to them, a former poacher explains.

When the “swart gety” ̶ the black tide, in reference to the anaerobic red tide conditions that render all shell-fish poisonous ̶ is in the bay, no-one touches abalone because it will get you killed, he warns.



The various abalone-bearing areas have been divided up among The Numbers’ associates, but ultimately, all answer to the 28s as all risk spending time behind bars, sooner or later.

So just call me Jason, the former poacher grins from beneath the beard and oversized cap. Like everyone else, he doesn’t want to be named when talking about the 28s, South Africa’s most feared prison gang, that now rules the Cape beaches from within the deepest confines of the prison system. The 28s run the jail system – and over the past few years, also the Western Cape’s illicit abalone-for-drugs racket.

Poaching of the slow-growing mollusc, prized in the Far East for its buttery taste, is now dominated by gangs of young black divers who descend in broad daylight and in large numbers on the craggy beaches to strip out whatever abalone they can find without the police lifting as much as a finger.

-------------------------------------Can the culture of corruption be stopped?---------------------------------------------


Where they come from and who they work for is also no secret, says Jason. “We all know they are fresh from the Eastern Cape,” arriving by taxi from the Western Cape’s impoverished neighbouring province.

In Masakhane, the township outside Gansbaai and epicentre of the Overberg coastal zone at the heart of the poaching industry, one can see them getting off the taxis, making their way to what appears to be kinsmen’s homes.

None of this is news: the Democratic Alliance has been complaining for years that even though up to 500 000 young black job seekers arrive in the Western Cape every year, no additional law enforcement resources are being made available for the attendant rise in violent crime.

Political weapon

What is new is abalone poaching emerging as a political weapon to conduct a poison-the-well policy. Once a sort of cottage industry for the impoverished communities of so-called Coloured fishermen between Cape Columbine and Cape Agulhas, it has become the weapon of choice in a secret war to challenge what is perceived as the economic and political dominance of white people in the only province that the ANC has never been able to win the vote in since 1994.

By effectively allowing the abalone resource to be hijacked by local and Chinese criminal interests – at a huge social cost to the local communities – the abalone industry has been de facto, if not de jure, privatised by a process of political legitimisation into the hands of local and Chinese organised crime, it emerged from an 18-month-long investigation.

Official investigators and prosecutors say Ernie ‘Lastig’ Solomon is believed to be the boss of the 28s and acknowledged king of the Cape abalone poachers. He could not be reached for comment, but according to a report, he was only willing to speak as the self-styled “King of the Khoisan”. This is highly politically significant: as so-called King of the Khoisan, Solomon does not feel answerable to modern laws imposed in the wake of colonisation.

Though official production is valued at only R218 million per annum, the fisheries sector directly employs 27 000 people, while another 100 000 depend on abalone as a resource in one way or another.

This process of criminal indigenisation started in 2007. That year, corruption-tainted Jacob Zuma took over as president and proceeded to dismantle key parts of the regulatory infrastructure and specialised law enforcement units that had protected marine resources until then.

In hindsight, Zuma and the gangs appear to have found common cause. By moving political control of the fisheries sector out of the Environment and Tourism Ministry to an expanded Agriculture Ministry, the Western Cape fisheries sector became part of Zuma’s corrupt patronage network – and worse, as the drug trade flooded the small coastal communities.

It was brutal financial carrot-and-stick politics, and the stick got used first. Artisanal fishing communities who for decades had depended on a living off the sea suddenly found themselves denied a right to basic survival. That they were the poorest sector of the otherwise wealthy Western Cape and most likely to be sympathetic to the ANC seemed not to matter.

The carrot was political access: parliamentary reports dating back to 2012 cited the coastal communities’ main complaint as political fronting, their names employed by the politically well-connected to land those rights for their own pockets only.

In effect, Solomon and his ANC associates are manipulating the awarding of fishing concessions to their own advantage, acting like a pair of pliers that is squeezing the impoverished coastal communities into political obedience. Access to the current list of concessionaires is impossible, by design.

Thrown open to the wolves

Over the past decade, the cottage industry that was local poaching has been thrown open to the wolves, especially after the joint SANParks and SA Navy patrols were closed down, as was every other specialised law enforcement unit that posed a political threat to Zuma.

It gets worse: on the ground, the carrots are sugar-coated with drugs, as abalone is often partly paid for in drugs. Little, if any, detectable flows of cash between the various players, who instead use a form of trade-based financial settlement, thus far has defeated any attempts at cracking the syndicates.

That there is a lot of cash in abalone is evident from the false economy it has created: during official crackdowns such as those in Gansbaai in December last year, local businesses saw turn-over crash and petty crime surge, says a local tyre dealership owner.

The attraction is easy cash: a diver delivering 20 kg of abalone for one dive earns R20 000 for a few hours’ work per month; the owner of a ski-boat heading up a 28-sanctioned crew earns R200 000 or more per month, according to the former poacher.

Where the cash comes from and how has, until now, largely remained a mystery. The secret to their trade is the ancient, trade-based financial settlements system known as fei qian or “Chinese Flying Money”.

“How do the poachers get paid for hundreds of tons of abalone?” asks Marcel Kroese, a former Head of Enforcement at the Directorate of Fisheries (DAFF) and now an international fisheries consultant. In his past experience, they only saw small amounts of cash in all illicit abalone busts, which was odd for a black market, cash-based business.

Following the money as a means of identifying the main players yielded zero results. “We could not ever find the money,” he says, making water-proof court cases a major challenge.

Drugs

Instead, payment was made in non-traceable shipments of precursor drugs used to manufacture Tik, a cheap and highly addictive form of cheap speed. Precursor drugs like ephedrine are often shipped to Walvis Bay and then trucked down to Cape Town to be cooked up in backyard labs and from there, find their way via the 28s and their associates in the poaching syndicates, into the local communities.

People mostly pretend not to see poachers. Farmers along the craggy Overberg coastline area say the poachers have made it clear they would burn down their houses if obstructed in any way by, for example, locking their farm-gates. Many are elderly, isolated and afraid, and know the police offer little, if any, protection from the poaching gangs.

This culture of fear has integrated organised crime into the very fabric of the local community, with everyone dependent on the trade in one way or another: from the lookouts to the garage owner selling them fuel to the granny storing a night’s catch in a backroom freezer.

In effect, this has pushed the artisanal fishing communities into the arms of organised crime, a fact widely and repeatedly testified to by local communities in parliamentary hearings on the fisheries sector in the Western Cape.

Corruption

“It’s just shocking how open the corruption has become,” comments former Head of Fisheries, Shaheen Moolla (now managing director of the highly influential fisheries advisory consultancy, Feike). “But what do you expect when the DG [of Fisheries] admitted in Parliament that the department is basically in melt-down?”

The turmoil in the directorate has, in fact, been a god-send to the fishing industry, both legal and illegal, as everyone is now bribing their way around regulations, says Moolla – and it has been like this since his stint as Head of Fisheries. “Even where we have gone to the Minister with hard evidence, nothing ever gets done. Corruption is (now) at substantive levels,” he says. This corruption, he concurs, has its roots at the political level and is what opened the front door to the likes of Solomon.

Solomon, local sources say, has major political ambitions and wants to become the ANC coordinator for the Overberg area. So did the ANC’s alignment with the 28s produce the desired political results Western Cape in the 8 May elections? The results suggest not: both the DA and the ANC have lost voters, mostly to former Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille’s new GOOD party.

The only real winners have been the shadowy Chinese gangs known to have been at the heart of the drugs-for-abalone interface since the early 1990s.

In State vs. Miller, the court in its 2017 ruling set out how the Chinese had operated a smuggling pipeline via the in-bond cold stores in the Cape Town harbour (and likely also the Walvis Bay facility in Namibia) by using a specific set of numbers around 3, 4 and 7 to identify what amounted to production lines of poached abalone.

In 2004, Peter Gastrow of the Institute for Security Studies identified them as the 14K and Table Mountain Gang, traced to a cluster of luxury homes in Plattekloof. As in the Miller case, all operations are run via brief-case companies set up in employees’ names.

But linking these companies with actual acts of organised criminal behaviour in any court of law by way of a financial paper-trail is well-nigh impossible because it is all built on a cash-only system hidden behind a facade of legitimate operations.

Zuma’s political gutting of the various specialised law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies to enable massive looting is a matter of record. While there are still many really dedicated people left in the ranks, there is no political direction, says Moolla. The only specialised agency, the Hawks, which handle abalone cases related to organised crime, are hobbled by a shortage of experienced staff and lack of resources.

But there is a new light at the end of the tunnel: President Cyril Ramaphosa, in announcing his 2019 Cabinet in the last week of May, moved Fisheries back into the environment and tourism portfolio and appointed rising ANC star and technocrat Barbara Creecy as Minister. This implies that, at the very least, quotas for harvesting any marine resource will have to meet rather strict environmental standards before being established and awarded.

But will she be able to stop the culture of corruption that has engulfed the fisheries sector? Its anaemic contribution to the Gross National Product, relative to the country’s 2 850 km-long coastline is a clue to a larger but hitherto ignored reality: a large part of it appears to have disappeared into the international black market, the largest of which is Hong Kong, where the illegal abalone trade alone is conservatively estimated to be worth R1.5 billion per annum.

If the associated drug trade is included, this implies a Chinese syndicate that has the entire Western Cape political elite in its pocket and is turning several billion dollars per year.

What is needed, according to Feike’s Moolla, is the political inclination, the manpower and political will to deal with the problem. But Creecy is up against it: no-one knows the abalone poaching industry better than the Chinese. “They told us often ‘your officials are very cheap, so easy to bribe’,” says Moolla.

And until that changes, nothing will break the Chinese chokehold over the abalone resource.

The former poacher has the best advice, though: “We always made sure they never owe us more than R10 000, because that’s what it cost to hire a Chinese hitman in those days – and then it became cheaper to whack you than pay you.”

It’s advice Ms Creecy will do well to heed in dealing with Chinese interests, both on and under the table.


John Grobler is an independent investigative journalist with a special interest in the relationship between the exploitation of primary resources and organised crime. This article was made possible with financial support from the EU Journalism Funds Money Trail Grant Programme.

Also in this case I knew that the situation was bad, but not that bad

https://thevillagenews.co.za/abalone-fa ... ama-zamas/

Abalone farming, the State and the Zama-Zamas
Writer: Elaine Davie

August 13, 201978



Shock! Horror! That is the invariable reaction of Overstrand residents every time there’s a new abalone bust in the area, as there was last week in an upmarket townhouse complex in Sandbaai. Yet poaching incidents consistently occur in plain sight in this part of the world; it can hardly be a surprise anymore. How could the other householders in the complex not have known what was going on in their midst? The smell alone would have been impossible to miss.

A full abalone processing plant was being operated in every section of the house, involving live and dried abalone worth around R3.9 million. And this was obviously not a once-off, hit-and-run operation. Equally, a casual stroller in broad daylight along the rocky shoreline between Gansbaai and Pringle Bay is very likely any day of the week to encounter the Zama-Zamas of the ocean either in the sea in wetsuit and goggles, or casually emerging from it with their catch in hand. Only a couple of weeks ago, there was a shoot-out between poachers and police just outside of Kleinmond.

The web of intrigue surrounding abalone poaching is difficult to unravel, involving, as it does, transnational drug, prostitution and money laundering operations, mostly controlled by powerful cartels in the East (see The Village NEWS of 19 June 2019). However, there is also evidence of rampant corruption in this country, mainly linked to officials employed by various State departments and agencies, tasked with protecting the natural resources of our country.

Ironically, in contrast to the criminal activity surrounding abalone poaching in the Overstrand, this same region is also home to a lucrative legal abalone industry, involving nine well-developed farms. How, one wonders, does the illegal trade affect their business and to what extent are they involved in attempts to eradicate it?

Tim Hedges, Managing Director of Abagold in Hermanus, sketches a fascinating picture of the global industry: It appears that South Africa is, in fact, quite a minor player on the world market. Its legal output is only approximately 1 500 tons of the total 170 000 tons produced annually. China itself, with extensive cage farming operations in the South China Sea, produces approximately 85% of the legal abalone on the market. Other producers are Mexico, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea.

Most interesting of all, however, is that none of these other countries, thanks to their stringent management and control systems, has a poaching problem. Some of them, like Japan, harvest on a strict quota rotation and are actually able to restock the ocean.

With all these competitors, why is South African perlemoen so sought-after in Asia then? It seems that the sub-specie, naturally available and produced on aquaculture farms in this country, Haliotis Midae, has a particular flavour and delicate texture that ensures a place for itself in the premium range of the market. It is a prized luxury food item to be found only in the top restaurants in China, or, in canned form, presented as an expensive gift on special occasions.

“The wild product poached from our oceans, amounting to between 2 000 and 3 000 tons a year,” explains Tim, “feeds into a completely different market from ours, due to the processing methodology employed by the illegal exporters of this valuable resource. Because the sea is becoming so overfished, the poachers are taking out smaller and smaller specimens (which, of course, has disastrous implications for the future survival of the species) and the flavour tends to be less refined than the farmed product, considering the unsophisticated backyard processing taking place. That means that it sells for a lower price on the Asian markets and fills a more accessible niche for the ordinary man in the street.

“The resilience of these shellfish is a constant source of amazement to us,” he adds. “We kept thinking that within 12 to 15 years, the stocks would have been completely decimated, but they continue to re-appear. We’re not sure if they’re moving to greater depths or into more inaccessible spots, but, unfortunately, the poachers are becoming more and more sophisticated and resourceful themselves and as has recently occurred at Robben Island, they keep finding them.”

Discussions have been held about the possibility of restocking the sea with farmed product, but the authorities are not keen on this idea, as they fear inbreeding, due to a lack of genetic diversity in the captive species. In any case, there wouldn’t be much point while unbridled poaching continues. As it is, the industry worldwide is under stress, due to global warming on the one hand and China’s current trade wars with the USA, on the other. No expansion is currently being undertaken in any of the countries where abalone is farmed, except China itself.



In our region, recent environmental challenges (like the two unprecedented red tides of 2017 and 2019), along with the protests and political unrest have had a major impact on the industry, leaving production way behind schedule. Abagold alone employs 400 people, impacting on probably around 1200 individuals in our communities. Over and above that, it supports local businesses for as many of its supplies and services as it can. However, on a world-wide scale, aquacultural methods are becoming more streamlined and cost-effective, and if the local industry is to continue being competitive it will have to be more productive and efficient; it will have to produce the highest quality product at a significantly lower cost.

In the end, though, like a vicious circle, most of the local challenges come back to the pressure of unemployment and poverty, together with venal, blatant corruption on the part of officialdom. As a result of the re-structuring of the fishing quota system by the government some years ago, many small-scale fishers whose families had lived off the sea for generations were deprived of an adequate living. Out of desperation, they became easy prey to the Godfathers of the poaching industry.

As Tim Hedges points out: “Until these circumstances change, there will be no incentive for the poaching to stop – or until all the abalone has finally been wiped from our oceans forever.” And then, once again, the Zama-Zamas will have nothing more to mine and the endless cycle of unemployment and crime will repeat itself. Tim is, nevertheless, cautiously optimistic that a workable solution can be found, if only political will can be mustered.

“In 2016,” he says, “a remarkable initiative was taken by the then Western Cape MEC for Agriculture and Fisheries, Beverley Schäfer when she organised a series of public hearings on the problem of abalone and rock lobster poaching. She included everyone, from small-scale fishers, to the scientists and commercial aquaculturists – even poachers – and they all had the opportunity to have their say. What emerged was a very thorough report accurately reflecting the sentiments expressed at these meetings and making suggestions for dealing with the matter, both from the point of view of putting a stop to the poaching and rooting out departmental corruption.

“One of the issues in this regard is that Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) officials are prohibited from working overtime, so many of the poachers schedule their operations to take place after-hours, but far more serious questions have been asked about what happens to confiscated stock after a bust. What we do know is that there are any number of possibilities for very lucrative, but illegal activities to take place. We are also aware that most of that stuff is finding its way onto the Asian market. What we are not sure of is who is benefiting.”

MEC Beverley Schäfer, now Western Cape Minister of Economic Opportunities, which includes agriculture, economic development and tourism, takes up the story herself. “It is estimated that since 2006, more than 96 million abalone have been poached out of Western Cape waters which amounts to a loss of around R1 billion a year to our Western Cape economy. The thing is, after a bust, when the abalone has been taken to the central storage site and is auctioned off, the income is supposed to go into a special fund to protect our marine resources. However, the DAFF has been telling Parliament that they do not have the money or the capacity to adequately protect the coast or the legal fishers. So where’s that money going to? For government to be selling poached abalone at commercial prices on the international market is completely unacceptable and very dangerous. There is corruption going on right up to the highest levels of government.”

She is absolutely determined, she says, to continue driving this project. Her 2016 100-page report was tabled before the parliamentary select committee and discussed; then nothing further came of it. “Since then,” she says, “poaching has continued to escalate by leaps and bounds. We made a number of serious suggestions about overhauling the small-scale fishing industry in terms of quotas, and in fact making this a provincial competency rather than a national one. We also believe this could provide the opportunity for a valuable private/public partnership with the commercial sector. At its core would be the re-establishment of a viable small-scale fishing industry, with the fishers themselves acting as stewards of this sustainable resource.

“We are not in a position to take on the illegal transnational trade in marine resources – that is up to the law-enforcement authorities, but we can try to cut off the source on our side. I believe that the new National Minister, Barbara Creecy has the will to tackle the corruption in DAFF head on, but it will not be an easy task, because I am convinced it goes all the way to the top. From our side in the Western Cape, we will give her all the support we can. I am obsessed with the need to put an end to this blight on our industry and to provide sufficient protection for our marine life and our fisheries.”

As Tim Hedges points out: “Until these circumstances change, there will be no incentive for the poaching to stop – or until all the abalone has finally been wiped from our oceans forever.” And then, once again, the Zama-Zamas will have nothing more to mine and the endless cycle of unemployment and crime will repeat itself.

Same with rhino, I'm afraid. Once again only select ringleaders and government officials get rich.

Obviously the police are closing both eyes if things were done in full daylight with smells and all

I seem to remeber that a special corps of "police" against this kind of crime had been established

".......... So where’s that money going to? For government to be selling poached abalone at commercial prices on the international market is completely unacceptable and very dangerous. There is corruption going on right up to the highest levels of government.”

Always the same thing

If the corruption in South Africa does not get eradicated, nothing will change and the economy will never get going again!!