The man seated across from me has agreed to meet me on condition that I not disclose his identity. ‘I’ve got a family,’ he says, by way of explanation after taking his seat. ‘I’ve got to be careful.’ As it is, he’s taking some risk talking to an unaccredited foreign journalist. The Laotian government doesn’t much like prying outsiders and exercises an authoritarian control over local media. All newspapers, television and radio stations are state-owned and run. Foreign journalists who obtain official accreditation to report in the country usually find themselves accompanied everywhere they go by ‘minders’ from the government’s state security agencies.
Crimes such as ‘distorting’ LPRP party policies, ‘spreading false rumours’ and ‘slandering the state’ are punishable with imprisonment. In 2003, two European journalists and their translator were arrested on trumped-up murder charges after travelling to central Laos to report on conflict between the Hmong and the communist regime. (A low-level Hmong rebellion has been simmering since 1975.) The journalists were detained after being caught up in a shoot-out in which Laotian troops killed a Hmong village security guard. After a summary trial lasting only two-and-half hours, the three men were each sentenced to fifteen years in jail. Laos later bowed to international pressure and released them. Two Hmong tribesmen who had helped them were not so lucky. A decade later, they remain in prison.
Conditions in Laotian jails are said to be appalling. Released prisoners have told of inmates shackled together in leg irons, forced to sleep on concrete floors in cells stinking of human excrement. They are routinely starved and beaten. In its 2012 annual report, Amnesty International reported that three demonstrators who were arrested in October 1999 for attempting to stage a peaceful protest against the government were still being held in jail despite having completed their ten-year prison sentences. Activists claim that a network of brutal secret prisons exists where dissidents, among them Hmong rebels, are held.
I caught a glimpse of one such prison from a boat on the Mekong River. It was set in a jungle clearing, guarded on one side by the river and on the other by green hills and dense, almost impregnable forest. Two long barracks were flanked by watchtowers manned by silhouetted figures armed with rifles. The boatman steered a wide berth away from the bank that the prison stood on and cut across the current.
‘It is a bad place,’ the boatman said.
Upstairs at the Joma Bakery, a man takes a seat within earshot of our table. He slouches with his back against a wall and then promptly dozes off. Or appears to. My contact looks uncomfortable. His voice drops to a whisper as he glances across at the interloper, whose eyes are hidden by sunglasses. Finally, he suggests that we move. ‘I don’t know who he is,’ he whispers, ‘but it could be someone trying to listen to us.’
Once we’re settled in another room and another corner, he tells me about a shipment that was stopped by a customs officer at Vientiane airport on 9 May 2004. There were 400 pangolins weighing about 600 kilograms packed in crates. Twenty of them were already dead. The cargo was bound for Vietnam en route to China and was accompanied by CITES permits and documentation, which may have been forged. The shipment was detained for several hours and then, inexplicably, someone ordered that it be released. This was done after a tax of $6 a kilogram had been levied. The customs officer who had stopped the cargo was later reprimanded. The name on the export manifest was Xaysavang Trading.
Documents I received from another source shed even further light on the extent of Xaysavang’s wildlife-trafficking operations. One is a sales contract between Xaysavang Trading, represented by its ‘director’, Vixay Keosavang, and a Vietnamese import-export company called ThaisonFC, JSC. In terms of the agreement, which was signed in March 2009, Xaysavang would provide the Vietnamese with 100 000 live animals, including 40 000 rat snakes, 20 000 monocellate cobras, 10 000 king cobras, 20 000 water monitors and 20 000 endangered yellow-headed temple turtles – all of which are considered delicacies in parts of Asia. Xaysavang stood to make $860 000 from the deal (about R6.9 million). The shipments would be delivered in tranches over the next eight months through several Vietnamese land borders, ports and airports.
A certificate of origin issued to Xaysavang Trading by the Bolikhamxay Provincial Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Paksan on 16 March 2009 shows that 2 000 yellow-headed temple turtles, weighing about 10 tons, were to be shipped by truck from Laos to Vietnam. Vixay’s business card lists him as the deputy chairman of the Bolikhamxay Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
From other documents it would appear that Vietnam may not have been the final destination. In an earlier transaction, ThaisonFC, JSC, received a shipment of 2 000 live yellow-headed temple turtles from Laos and re-exported them to the Quang Da Seafoods Trading Company in China’s Guangxi province.
Xaysavang Trading was formally registered in Laos on 8 August 2008 with reported start-up capital of just over $1.6 million. The enterprise registration certificate lists Vixay Keosavang as the sole director.
It remains unclear when exactly the company expanded its business operations to southern Africa. The whistleblower, Johnny Olivier, remembers meeting Punpitak Chunchom, Vixay’s ‘man in South Africa’, and some of the Thais working for Xaysavang, in mid- to late-2008. At the time, the main focus of their enterprise was the purchase of lion bones. Records obtained by Gareth Morgan, a DA Member of Parliament, showed that five South African game farmers and taxidermists shipped at least 327 lion carcasses or skeletons to Xaysavang in Laos between 2009 and 2010.
The first time the company appears to have been implicated by name in illegal activities in Africa is in a press statement released by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) on 27 July 2009. It recorded that KWS, together with Kenyan customs, had seized 280 kilograms of ‘raw elephant ivory’ and two un-mounted rhino horn ‘trophies’ weighing eighteen kilograms. The estimated value was $1 million.
The consignment, which had originated in Mozambique, was ‘illegally destined to Laos’. According to the statement, ‘The captured trophies were registered in the name of Xaysavang Trading Export Import Company Limited and destined to Paxsan District-Bolikhamxay Vientiane-Laos.’ KWS head Julius Kipng’etich commented that ‘since Mozambique has no rhinos and elephants, we suspect the trophies were illegally poached from neighbouring countries and transported to Maputo by road’.
Waybills issued by Mozambique Airlines in Maputo show that other consignments were routed from there to Johannesburg, and then on to Hong Kong, Bangkok and, finally, Vientiane. On 25 November 2010, 435 kilograms of cargo was shipped from Mozambique. The contents were listed on the waybill as ‘personal effects’. The shipment, which was addressed to Xaysavang Trading in Laos, arrived in Bangkok on 6 January 2011, and was detained and searched by Thai customs officials. Inside two pallets they found sixty-nine elephant tusks and four pieces of ivory worth an estimated $320 000 (about R2.6 million).
The farm on the outskirts of Paksan is run-down and neglected. Dozens of macaques clamour for attention in filthy, rusted cages. Some appear to have escaped and run wild around the wire pens, scaling the sides and looking in at the macaques that are still caged. There is little food. They are housed fifteen to twenty in a pen. Many of the animals are ill and painfully thin, their hair falling out in clumps. There are rumours that Xaysavang is in trouble; that Mr Chen and the Chinese have pulled out and that the monkeys are being left to starve to death.
In late 2011, an undercover team from the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) – a British-based NGO that campaigns to stop animals from being used in scientific experiments – counted 575 macaques in pens on the farm. They found that many of the animals were starving to death. ‘Some were dead in their pens.’
A man, who claimed to be the owner but is not named in the BUAV report, told them he did not have money to feed the monkeys, but in the same breath claimed that he was opening a ‘zoo’ and had been granted a government licence to do so. ‘I’m opening a new farm which is bigger than t
his one,’ he said.
In July 2012, the WWF released a ‘wildlife crime scorecard’ assessing levels of CITES compliance and enforcement in twenty-three countries that are central to the international wildlife trade. Laos, Vietnam and Mozambique were the worst performers. Vietnam was the top destination for rhino horn from South Africa. Laos and Mozambique had failed utterly in enforcing the international ban on trade in ivory, the ‘scorecard’ found, citing a recent survey in Vientiane that found 2 500 items of ivory at twenty-four retail shops.
‘While much of Laos’s illegal ivory was said by traders to derive from Laos’s Asian elephants, there have been seizures of African ivory en route to Laos in Thailand and Kenya,’ the WWF report noted. ‘Laos itself has never reported an ivory seizure.’
In a clear reference to Xaysavang, although it did not name the company, the report raised concerns about the trade in rhino horn trophies and lion bones from South Africa to Laos and Vietnam. ‘While the end-use of the lion bones is not known, it is likely that they are feeding into illegal internal markets for tiger bone medicine. Laos and Viet Nam should clearly enforce prohibitions against the use of captive big cats to supply internal and international trade.’
Vixay Keosavang first came to the attention of Thai police nearly a decade ago. A 2003 Thai crime intelligence report on key figures in the illegal wild-life trade lists him by name and includes details of numerous wildlife transactions in which he was allegedly involved. Tons of animals were routed to buyers in China, the report states. It also suggests ties between Vixay and a Malaysian wildlife dealer. Information contained in the report about Vixay himself is sketchy and suggests that he may have at one stage been a police officer in Vietnam.
A far more detailed profile emerges in information from Vietnamese sources. Vixay was born in 1958 in Xiangkhouang Province in north-eastern Laos. During the CIA’s decade-long ‘secret war’, it would gain the unenviable distinction of being the most bombed province in the most bombed country in the world.
In the late 1970s, Vixay was conscripted into the Lao People’s Army. Reports suggest he was discharged in 1993. There is some speculation that he still has ties with Laotian military intelligence structures. There are also suggestions that he held a senior position in a powerful state-run company with interests in construction and international trade.
His political links seem to have taken shape in the early 1990s, when he was reportedly appointed as secretary to the chairman of the Bolikhamxay provincial assembly. Over the next ten years he worked in various positions within the provincial government, heading its ‘foreign co-operation division’ and later serving as deputy director of the province’s Department of Trade. His business card lists him as vice-president of both the Laos national swimming and boxing committees.
Vixay reportedly told Huong Quoc Dung, the Vietnamese journalist, that he had been ‘assigned by leaders’ in 2002 to run Xaysavang Trading. He did not name the ‘leaders’ and would give no explanation for the strange ‘assignment’.
In his house is said to be a collection of photographs showing him posing with senior Laotian government ministers, including the Minister of Trade, and the Minister of Planning and Investment. Perhaps most troubling of all is a report which states that Vixay accompanied the Laotian deputy prime minister, Bouasone Bouphavanh (later the country’s prime minister for four years), on an official visit to Vietnam in 2004.
It seems clear that Vixay’s background as a senior government official and his carefully cultivated ties to powerful Laotian and, possibly, Vietnamese politicians ensure that he can continue his dealings without fear of arrest or prosecution. Steven Galster, who heads up the Bangkok-based Freeland Foundation, which investigates wildlife crime and human trafficking in the region, describes Vixay as ‘the Mr Big in Laos’.
‘He seems so well protected and we haven’t met any law enforcement officers in Laos who are able, or willing, to take this on.’
Vixay’s home is just over a kilometre from the hotel. Its location hints at his influence. To reach it, we drive north, away from the river, past the offices of the Ministry of Justice, the People’s Court of Bolikhamxay Province and a local bank. We turn left into a street that leads to the Bolikhamxay planning and investment department. In the centre of the block is a sprawling building that houses the main provincial administration offices. Diagonally opposite it is a bright yellow, red and blue sign and the name Xaysavang Trading Export-Import. A Laotian flag flutters in the breeze. An ornate green-and-gold fence fronts the property. By Laos’s impoverished standards, the house is a mansion, although one that has seen better days. It is an odd-shaped construction with three second-floor balconies that look as if they have been randomly pasted onto the side of the building. The roof is a zigzag of red tiles, the garden unkempt and the grass overgrown.
The main gate is unlocked, but the front door is shut and there is no sign of Vixay. I dial his cellphone number. A male voice answers, but before I can say much, he cuts me off. ‘No English,’ he says. I hand the phone to the interpreter. I had decided it would be best to keep my story vague. The interpreter has been briefed to tell Vixay that I have travelled to Laos from Africa and would very much like to meet him to discuss business. Given that I didn’t have official press credentials, I had decided I would only broach the subject once I met him.
Vixay is in Vientiane, the interpreter tells me. We had probably passed him on the road. He is tied up in meetings in the capital, he says, but will have time to meet in a few days. He asks that I send him a fax with a formal request.
Before I travelled to Laos, I’d only ever seen one photograph of Vixay. It was affixed to a copy of the 2008 company registration form. Formal and sterile, it told me very little. It showed a man with neatly combed black hair, plump cheeks and full lips in a neat black suit with a red tie.
Later I was shown digital footage that had been secretly filmed with a hidden camera in the office of Vixay’s house in Paksan. The footage was blurred and unsteady but, for a few moments, Vixay was clearly identifiable. He looked a little older than in the photograph, but there was no doubting that it was the same man. The camera panned. On the wall behind Vixay was a buffalo trophy. To his left was a photograph of him and his wife, both dressed in white, probably on their wedding day, mounted in a gilt, baroque frame. It was propped up on a table flanked on one side by a heavy wooden chair with dragons for armrests and, on the other, by a grey, steel filing cabinet.
The investigator who had obtained the footage remarked after I watched it: ‘Imagine what stories that filing cabinet could tell.’
I never did meet Vixay. The first meeting was postponed, then the next. When I pressed him, he did what any wildlife trafficking kingpin in Laos would do. He called the police. Eventually I sent him a fax with a list of questions about Xaysavang’s activities. He didn’t answer them. When the interpreter called him, he grew angry. He denied any involvement in trafficking rhino horn and lion bones, and insisted that his business was legally conducted ‘on behalf of the Laotian government’. When the interpreter called him again, he was threatened with arrest. My fax had been given to the police, he was told. They were investigating. I was warned to leave. Later I heard that someone had been asking questions about me at the hotel I had stayed at in Vientiane. But by then I was in Hong Kong, on my way back to South Africa.
It was a frustrating end to my search for the kingpin. But, in a way, it was also a reminder of how untouchable the crime bosses who drive the rhino horn trade really are.
In South Africa, arrests for rhino-related crimes have almost doubled. Police are beginning to chip away at some of the Vietnamese syndicates, and a number of high-level figures and key contact men in South Africa have been arrested. But more than 80 per cent of arrests continue to be those of poachers – low-level hired guns from impoverished villages in Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. They are cannon fodder, easily replaced. The remaining 20 per cent of those arrested are middlemen, cour
iers and local exporters. Their arrests are more disruptive. But eventually someone else always steps into the breach.
Within months of the arrests of Vixay’s alleged lieutenants, Chumlong Lemtongthai and Punpitak Chunchom, there were indications that another Thai national had arrived in South Africa to co-ordinate Xaysavang’s shipments. The company suspended efforts to export rhino horn trophies, but the flow of lion bones continued unabated.
Vixay, however, seems not to have given up on his quest for supplies of horn. A short time after my return home, an undercover investigator recorded Vixay bragging that he had ‘many customers’ for rhino horn in Vietnam. He claimed the Laos government had given him a ‘quota’ to trade in ivory, horn and tiger bones. And he said he would be prepared to pay many thousands of dollars for a kilogram of rhino horn.
It is surely only a matter of time before someone steps forward to claim the bounty.
Glossary
BAKKIE – pickup truck
BLIKSEM (N) – scoundrel
BLIKSEM (V) – beat (someone) up
BOERTJIE – diminutive of Afrikaans word for farmer
BOSSIES – literally bush-mad or crazy. Often used in reference to soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder
BRAAIVLEIS – barbecue where meat is grilled over an open fire
DIE BOSKROEG – The Bush Bar
DOOS – vulg. cunt
DORP – small town
DROËWORS – dried sausage
Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade Page 35
