By the time police swept into the poshest suburb of Malawi’s capital and surrounded the high red walls of house number 159 it was too late. Peter Wang had disappeared, leaving behind a family, a criminal empire and a gaping hole in what was supposed to be a triumph over elephant poaching.
Neighbours called him ”the Chinaman” but police are not sure where he came from, just as they are not sure when he was born, what he looks like or where he went. They have no pictures of him, not even a photo-fit, but they do have a strong suspicion that he is back in business.
Investigators have told the Guardian that an apparent breakthrough in June against a vast smuggling network has evaporated. Six tons of ivory bound for Japan was intercepted in Singapore but the ringleaders escaped and the trafficking continues, leaving game parks littered with mutilated carcasses.
Wang, also known as Peter Onn, YS Wong and Wang Yong Shi, according to documents found by detectives, is accused of being the linchpin in a network of African poachers and Asian buyers which flouted the trade ban introduced in 1989.
Conservationists celebrated the ban, but a syndicate thought to be based in Hong Kong and Singapore dispatched their agent to Malawi in 1994.
Rumoured to have a wife in Asia, Wang slipped into the capital, Lilongwe, and took Hanifa Thomasi as a common law wife.
He built high walls around their home in the suburb known as Area 47 and never spoke to neighbours. ”I never even saw him properly, he was always in a car,” a woman who lived opposite said.
According to the Malawian authorities, ivory was poached in several countries, gathered in Chipata in Zambia, sent to Lilongwe for false documents and trucked to Durban for shipment to the far east.
The consignment intercepted in Singapore contained 532 tusks and more than 40 000 blank ivory hankos, the traditional Japanese name seals. And a death sentence for an estimated 600 elephants. Conservationists were shocked to discover that since 1994 there have been at least 18 other consignments.
The smuggling was exposed by officials from the Zambian wildlife authority who blew the whistle on colleagues who allegedly colluded with poachers. They tipped off Sam Ngosi, a UK-trained investigator with Malawi’s anti-corruption bureau, who identified Mr Wang and alerted the authorities in Asia.
But Wang appeared to have been warned and fled, leaving behind his Malawian family. Thomasi refused to speak to the Guardian but the couple’s daughter, aged about six, said: ”My daddy is in China.” The investigation appears to have stalled. Zambia’s investigators have been unable to press their inquiries and the accused have been moved to other jobs in the wildlife service.
One senior official who ”borrowed” irreplaceable documents from investigators and claimed they were stolen from his car is suspected of passing them to accomplices.
In Malawi, Sam Ngosi expressed frustration at the poor communication with colleagues in Asia. ”I want to crack the syndicate, I’d like to track the buyers.”
Mary Rice, of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a UK-based charity which tracked the smugglers, said the Japanese police refused to release details of their investigation and that the Chinese appeared to have made little progress.
”I would say they are back in business. The fact is nobody has been brought to book and now it’s the rainy season when tour operators leave and the poachers move in,” Rice said. Gift Gwedeza Zulu (25) is accused of being Wang’s accomplice, using his craft shop, Allena Curios, as a front. When the anti-corruption bureau raided the shop they found raw and polished ivory as well as hippopotamus teeth.
Zulu is currently on bail. He told the Guardian he was innocent and that his Mercedes, Adidas runners and designer jeans were the fruit of honest toil: ”I didn’t do anything illegal and I never heard of Peter Wang. What is he, Chinese?”
For poachers and conservationists the stakes were raised last month when the UN convention on international trade in endangered species relaxed the 13-year ban on ivory trade by voting to allow Botswana, Namibia and South Africa a one-off sale of 30 tonnes of elephant tusks in 2004.
The idea was to let the three countries earn up to £13m by selling stockpiles but conservationists said the door to illegal trade had opened wider, since Africa and Asia lacked the means and the will to source ivory’s provenance.
One investigator said Wang would have toasted the agreement, ”assuming he drinks, of course”. – Guardian Unlimited Â