In Trafficking of Wildlife, Out of Reach of the Law

Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

Kenyan wildlife rangers guarding an intercepted shipment of elephant tusks and rhino horns at the Nairobi airport in 2009.

By THOMAS FULLER

Published: March 3, 2013

 HONG TONG, Laos — On an obscure and bumpy dirt road not far from the banks of the Mekong River, the compound of Vixay Keosavang stands out for its iron gates and cinder-block walls topped with barbed wire, a contrast to the rickety wooden stilt houses nearby in the shade of rubber trees.

A security guard who opened the gate recently said tigers, bears, lizards and many endangered anteaters called pangolins were inside. He called his boss and handed the cellphone to a reporter seeking permission to enter the compound.

Mr. Vixay (pronounced wee-sai), who spoke politely in a mixture of Thai and Laotian, denied that there were any animals inside or that he was in the wildlife business.

“There’s nothing there,” Mr. Vixay said of the compound, which is a five-mile drive to the nearest paved road. “Who told you about it?”

Mr. Vixay is notorious among investigators and government officials in several countries fighting to cut off syndicates operating a thriving trade in endangered animals that spans continents and has led to the slaughter of elephants in Africa, the illegal killings of rhinoceroses and the decimation of other species living in Asia’s jungles.

Mr. Vixay, says one investigator, is the “Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking.”

Interviews with government officials in five countries and a review of hundreds of pages of government and court documents compiled by a counter-trafficking organization provide strong evidence that Mr. Vixay, a Laotian, is a linchpin of wildlife smuggling operations.

South African authorities prosecuting a case of rhinoceros horn smuggling say one of Mr. Vixay’s companies, Xaysavang Trading, perpetrated “one of the biggest swindles in environmental crime history,” circumventing the law by hiring people to pose as hunters, who are allowed to kill a limited number of rhinos as trophies. In a separate case, Kenyan officials tied the company to the smuggling of elephant tusks for the ivory trade.

But the bulk of Mr. Vixay’s wildlife trading operations, investigators say, is the “laundering” of animals.

The ruse, the documents suggest and investigators say, involves smuggling animals from other countries into Laos and then exporting them — with Laotian government paperwork — under the pretense that they were bred there in captivity and therefore, in many cases, could be sold legally.

The case is especially frustrating to those outside Laos, who say Mr. Vixay appears untouchable as long as he remains in his home country, where, they say, officials have refused to do a thorough investigation despite the reams of evidence presented to them. And without stopping him, wildlife officials and investigators say, they have little hope of breaking down a business empire that they say connects the African savanna to the Asian jungles and ultimately to customers of ivory and traditional medicines in Vietnam and China.

“He is the single largest known illegal wildlife trafficker in Asia,” said Steven Galster, the executive director of Freeland, a counter-trafficking organization that has been trailing Mr. Vixay for eight years. “He runs an aggressive business, sourcing lucrative wild animals and body parts wherever they are easily obtained. Every country with commercially valuable wildlife should beware.”

Freeland has been instrumental in building a case against Mr. Vixay, and was the source of the vast majority of the documents reviewed for this article, including business contracts and Laotian customs documents that attest to the scale of his operations. Founded in Bangkok more than a decade ago, Freeland is staffed by current and former law enforcement officials from Britain, the United States, Thailand and a number of other Asian countries, and is financed partly by the American government.

The nonprofit organization, which works closely with government officials in Africa, Asia and the United States, also provided entree for The New York Times to some of those officials. The Times interviewed authorities from Thailand, China, South Africa, Laos and Vietnam.

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