Bangkok--24 Apr--LEEO-WEN
The illegal wildlife trade is a multi-billion dollar business, attracting increasingly organized criminal syndicates operating across borders and exploiting gaps in enforcement to facilitate wildlife poaching and trafficking. Increased trans-boundary cooperation and capacity-building for government law enforcement investigators is therefore critical if we are to dismantle these organizations, and this is where the Special Investigations Group (SIG) comes in. SIG has emerged as an important tool to unite and empower law enforcement to help combat wildlife trafficking, and safeguard our natural heritage.
The Special Investigations Group (SIG)
• Group working on wildlife trafficking under ASEAN-WEN for government investigators to target high-level traffickers of African elephant ivory, rhino horn, big cats and pangolins
• Forum for criminal investigators and managers to discuss wildlife trafficking intelligence, challenges and best practices, while developing enforcement capacity
• Mechanism for the confidential exchange of information and coordination of cross-border investigations between national law enforcement agencies
• Proven solution to enhance cross-border collaboration on transnational wildlife trafficking
SIG Successes
• High-profile arrests of major wildlife traffickers: Including ivory traffickers from Thailand, Africa and the United States, as well as five high-level tiger traffickers.
• Operation Cobra: United investigation agencies across 3 continents in a month-long operation.
• Operation Cobra II : Resulted in over 400 arrests and more than 350 major wildlife seizures.
• The repatriation of more than 1,800kg of elephant ivory from Singapore to Kenya
• The development of a first ever Marine-SIG investigate criminal syndicates involved in illegal trade and exploitation of marine species
Cobra Operations
Operation Cobra I, II and III – representing 10 countries and four regional wildlife enforcement networks – each ran for 30 days in 2013, 2014 and 2015, driven by a team of wildlife enforcement, police and customs officers from Asia, Africa and the US, who simultaneously held real-time investigations against wildlife criminals across the continents. The unprecedented operations disrupted and slowed illegal trade in endangered species for at least 90 days in a normally high season for wildlife trade, and resulted in hundreds of seizures and arrests.
Four major factors led to success: Government-led. Demand-driven. Civil Society-supported. Based on lessons learnt from SIG
Police Captain Vatanarak Suranartyuth, Director of Law Enforcement Extension Office – Wildlife Enforcement Network said, "A key result of the relationships built during the Cobra operations was the decision to publicly expose the Xaysavang syndicate. Consequently, the US government declared an unprecedented $1 million reward for information leading to the dismantling of the syndicate."