Speaker 1: School of humans.
Speaker 2: It's five in the morning, November twenty fifth, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: and Ivonne Guthman, a thirty two year old fisherman from
Speaker 2: Mexico's Baja Peninsula, looks out onto Tortugas Bay. The Pacific
Speaker 2: rolls gently at his feet. The first glimmers of sunrise
Speaker 2: reveal a patchwork of boats on the horizon. The waters
Speaker 2: here are popular among sports fishers. Giant schools of black
Speaker 2: sea bass and fat and yellowtail lure anglers from hundreds
Speaker 2: of miles away. That's what brought Guthman here, and now
Speaker 2: he and five other fishermen prepare their boat and begin
Speaker 2: motoring out onto the water. Destination Isla de Stedros, a
Speaker 2: two hour trip from the docks. The island is a
Speaker 2: rocky spit of land home to just a few thousand people.
Speaker 2: A few years back, Mitsubishi built a company town here
Speaker 2: to store salt. But most locals depend on the fishing industry.
Speaker 2: And then there's the few who rely on the islands well,
Speaker 2: let's just call it the underground economy. The Sinaloa Cartel,
Speaker 2: arguably the most powerful and dangerous drug trafficking syndicate in
Speaker 2: the West, calls Sadros their turf, but the cartel does
Speaker 2: not own a monopoly on these waters. Some drug traffickers
Speaker 2: know SROs as a frontier, a place where small time
Speaker 2: drug runners and splinter groups can get their start. Yvonne
Speaker 2: Gooseman and his fishing buddies they know this, but they're
Speaker 2: fishermen and they stay in their lane, or at least
Speaker 2: that's what they tell people, because on that November day
Speaker 2: they don't cast their lines into the water. Instead, they
Speaker 2: steer their boat toward the northern point of Sadrus. They
Speaker 2: cast anchor slosh onto shore and begun unloading dozens of
Speaker 2: black plastic tubs. Within minutes, they're tossing hundreds of small
Speaker 2: succulents into the boxes, and little do they know they
Speaker 2: are being watched by evening search and rescue teams are
Speaker 2: looking for the fishermen. One is found dead with a
Speaker 2: bullet hole in the back of his head, another alive
Speaker 2: with a gunshot wound to his arm, and Yvonne Gusman well,
Speaker 2: they find him weeks later, his decaying body bloated, bobbing
Speaker 2: on the surface of the bay, his legs tightly wound
Speaker 2: with rope. In this episode, plant poaching collides with organized crime.
Speaker 2: How cartels, mobs, and criminal syndicates might be connected to
Speaker 2: some of your favorite plants. I'm Summer rain Oaks from
Speaker 2: School of Humans and iHeart podcasts. This is bad seeds.
Speaker 2: On is La de Seyros, there's a threatened succulent called
Speaker 2: siempre viva or dudley A pachyphytom. It looks like a
Speaker 2: starry clump of sea an enemies with delicate hints of
Speaker 2: green and chalky white leaves. It's endemic to the island,
Speaker 2: meaning it only grows there, and in recent years in
Speaker 2: East Asia, a single wild Dudleya has been selling for
Speaker 2: two hundred dollars a pop, and that's been attracting people
Speaker 2: who are hungry to make money, including Mexico's drug cartels.
Speaker 1: Criminal activity and criminal networks are often driven by generating
Speaker 1: profit making money.
Speaker 2: You may remember Jenny Felt them from the Wildlife Justice Commission.
Speaker 1: If people are willing to pay high prices for these things,
Speaker 1: criminal networks will want to supply that They will find
Speaker 1: a way to provide that service, regardless of whether it's
Speaker 1: legal or not.
Speaker 2: In fact, this Dudleya has been luring criminals for a
Speaker 2: while now. In twenty seventeen, the news outlet Masnotsios reported
Speaker 2: that the Mexican military had stopped a tractor trailer driven
Speaker 2: by three Korean nationals and a Mexican. When they pride
Speaker 2: opened the back doors, they found nearly five thousand Dudley
Speaker 2: apachef item one million dollars worth of poached succulents, but
Speaker 2: that was small fry. More recently, the plant's been targeted
Speaker 2: by major players in the world of organized crime.
Speaker 1: Yet we had been saying in our own investigations with
Speaker 1: wildlife crime was increasing intersection of wildlife crime with other
Speaker 1: types of crime as well. If there are easy ways
Speaker 1: to make money and ways to summit the regulatory system
Speaker 1: around it, that's when other criminal groups might be interested
Speaker 1: to exploit those networks.
Speaker 2: In other words, organized crime syndicats have been diversifying their
Speaker 2: portfolios beyond drugs. Some cartel's mine iron, others steal gasoline
Speaker 2: and grow avocados. The Cineloa cartel has an alarmingly large
Speaker 2: stake in Mexico's legal seafood industry, and now they're moving
Speaker 2: into succulents. In the case of the missing fishermen, rescuers
Speaker 2: would find two of them alive not far from where
Speaker 2: the succulents grow. One was uninjured, but the other was
Speaker 2: stained in blood, clutching a bullet wound. Not far from them,
Speaker 2: officials found dozens of tubs filled with dudley a pachyphytum,
Speaker 2: and near those bins was the lifeless body of one
Speaker 2: of their friends, faced down on the rocks. The survivors
Speaker 2: told authorities everything that they had been hired by El Creq,
Speaker 2: a sub chapter of the drug cartel. This group, according
Speaker 2: to the Mexican newspaper and Signata, is involved in quote
Speaker 2: drug trafficking, drug dealing, homicides, and illegal marketing of the
Speaker 2: endemic plant siempre viva. The cartelts believed uses its vast
Speaker 2: smuggling network to send these plants abroad with poached dudleya,
Speaker 2: traveling to Tijuana, then LAPAs, then to Mexico City, and
Speaker 2: then onward to China or Korea and onto the windowsills
Speaker 2: of unsuspecting succulent collectors in Reais. The cartels are reportedly
Speaker 2: paid in supplies that can be used to synthesize drugs.
Speaker 2: It's basically a barter system. All of this, if I'm
Speaker 2: being honest, sounds weird. Organized criminals and botany sound like
Speaker 2: such unlikely bedfellows, but the truth is plants launched organized
Speaker 2: crime as we know it. And I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: marijuana or cocaine or all the other plants fueling the
Speaker 2: international drug trade. I'm talking lemons. We're in Sicily the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century and citrus fruits are in high demand. Scientists
Speaker 2: recently discovered that vitamin C and lemons and oranges can
Speaker 2: prevent scurvy, and now the shipping industry is knocking down
Speaker 2: doors to get its hands on some cold, hard fruit.
Speaker 3: In these early days, it turned out that Sicily was
Speaker 3: one of the few places is where oranges and lemon
Speaker 3: were grown.
Speaker 2: That's doctor Ola Olson, by the way. He's a Swedish
Speaker 2: economist and an expert on the weird link between lemons
Speaker 2: and the mob.
Speaker 3: Cecily could relatively quickly then answer to this greater demand,
Speaker 3: and this led to kind of a boosting demand that
Speaker 3: happened in a very weakly institutionalized community.
Speaker 2: In the mid eighteen hundreds. The state was too weak
Speaker 2: to police the people, so rogues, marauders, brigands and highway
Speaker 2: bandits plagued the countryside. Living in Sicily was every man
Speaker 2: for himself.
Speaker 3: The general environment at this time was a very unstable,
Speaker 3: weakly institutions, lot of mistrust in government.
Speaker 2: For lemon farmers, the picking season was a time to
Speaker 2: watch your back. A smart poacher could steal a year's
Speaker 2: harvest in just a night or two. Unable to rely
Speaker 2: on the state for protection, farmers grabbed shotguns and built walls.
Speaker 2: But this wasn't enough. The bandits kept coming, and growers
Speaker 2: began looking for alternatives.
Speaker 3: The people who cultivated citrus then needed to employ different
Speaker 3: types of security personnel, and often this personnel came from
Speaker 3: groups that had established themselves locally as some kind of
Speaker 3: strong men that could bring some order to the kind
Speaker 3: of local chaotic situation. When this sort of state could
Speaker 3: not really do that efficiently.
Speaker 2: Hiring local roughnecks worked, at least for a while. Sicilian
Speaker 2: lemon production actually skyrocketed three thousand percent over a decade.
Speaker 2: Profits stored until the men hired to do the security well,
Speaker 2: they began demanding a bigger piece of the cut.
Speaker 3: So in this institutional vacuum. This is together with this
Speaker 3: huge demand for citrus fruits. That's why we believe that
Speaker 3: the mafia rose.
Speaker 2: The guards watching the lemon groves began organizing and extorting farmers,
Speaker 2: stealing from their trees and selling the lemons in private.
Speaker 3: They actually infiltrated in this way, both acting as middlemen,
Speaker 3: but also acting more directly in the harbors, in the ports,
Speaker 3: monitoring and also squeezing rents out of the trade in
Speaker 3: different stages, so to speak, both directly and indirectly.
Speaker 2: The consequences for not cooperating could be dire. In eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy two, one lemon grove owner, a doctor Golotti, fired
Speaker 2: his warden for stealing fruit. He hired a new guard,
Speaker 2: but then the warden's friends shot the new security. Detailed
Speaker 2: dead menacing letters poured into Golotti's home demanding that he
Speaker 2: rehire his old help. Intimidation, it turns out, worked. The
Speaker 2: middlemen of the lemon trade group together swore oaths and
Speaker 2: soon controlled much of the fruit supply chain. Some mafioso's
Speaker 2: were so well organized that they were able to wrest
Speaker 2: property from the farmers themselves. Eventually, the group expanded beyond fruit.
Speaker 2: They got involved with local sulfur mines, and when Florida
Speaker 2: overtook Sicily as a new citrus hub, these groups up
Speaker 2: well how do I put it new business opportunities.
Speaker 3: Like smuggling of people or smuggling of arms. I would
Speaker 3: say it's pretty is standard that these groups try eventually
Speaker 3: to diversify as potentially one first origin in a sense,
Speaker 3: but then they quickly move on to other goods.
Speaker 2: The point is organized crime and the plant and wildlife trade.
Speaker 2: They are more intertwined than you can imagine. Militant groups
Speaker 2: in East Africa, fron terrorists through ivory poaching the Talipan
Speaker 2: made hundreds of millions controlling Afghanistan's poppy harmist A few
Speaker 2: decades ago, insurgent maoists in Nepal beefed up their wartime
Speaker 2: bank accounts by selling a pricey fungus called cordyceps that
Speaker 2: and I'm not making this up, grows on caterpillars, and
Speaker 2: detective agencies know this. Since twenty seventeen, sting operations staged
Speaker 2: by Interpol's Wildlife Crime Working Groups have arrested more than
Speaker 2: three thousand people, and when the dollars are counted, wildlife
Speaker 2: smuggling only lacks behind human firearms and drug trafficking. The
Speaker 2: United Nations projects that wildlife crime will continue to increase
Speaker 2: five to seven percent each year. And yet, despite this
Speaker 2: long history, and despite the obvious growth, efforts to stop
Speaker 2: it have been pretty wimpy at best.
Speaker 1: Environmental crime isn't prioritized by law enforcement compared to other
Speaker 1: types of crime. You know, it sounds a rasourced compared
Speaker 1: to other crime types. If the penalty is not even
Speaker 1: one tenth of the profit, which is often the case,
Speaker 1: it's just a cost of doing business. At the end
Speaker 1: of the day, will have no impact in stopping or
Speaker 1: deterring that crime.
Speaker 2: Turns out, crime does pay. And if succulents and lemons
Speaker 2: are enough to lure cartels in the mob, just imagine
Speaker 2: what it must be like when an individual plant can
Speaker 2: fetch fifty thousand dollars. A look inside the syndicates stealing
Speaker 2: the most expensive plants on the planet. When we return,
Speaker 2: I want you to close your eyes and imagine. Imagine
Speaker 2: the world sixty five million years yars ago to the
Speaker 2: age of dinosaurs. You're surrounded by jungle. It's muggy, the
Speaker 2: sweat is beating on your brow. Above, winged reptiles sore below.
Speaker 2: Giant beetles and primitive possums scurry through the undergrowth nearby,
Speaker 2: munching on some plants is one of my favorites, the
Speaker 2: long necked Alamosaurus. But I want you to imagine the
Speaker 2: plant life too. It's so green. There are ferns and
Speaker 2: conifers and Ginko's galore, some of the world's first flowering plants.
Speaker 2: Beautiful pink blossoms are taking room. And then you notice
Speaker 2: this strange stubby tree that is.
Speaker 4: A cycad s perfessional is looked like a palm.
Speaker 2: That's Anders Lindstrum. He's a botanist at the nong Nutched
Speaker 2: Tropical Garden in Thailand, home to the largest collection of
Speaker 2: cycads in the world, which I had the pleasure of
Speaker 2: visiting a few years back.
Speaker 4: The main difference between a psycha and the palm is
Speaker 4: I will reproductive structure. Palms have actually flowers, but the
Speaker 4: fertile structure of psychad are looking like pine cones.
Speaker 2: These palmy greens are some of the oldest plants in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 4: They're ancient blond groups that spat back to the dinosaur time,
Speaker 4: and they have survived and actually flourished off to the dinosaur.
Speaker 2: Honders call cycads living fossils, and that means they could
Speaker 2: command a high price a single cycad can fetch upwards
Speaker 2: of one hundred thousand dollars. If you tallied the profits
Speaker 2: from all the cycads poached over the last two decades,
Speaker 2: you'd have more than six hundred million dollars. A lot
Speaker 2: of those thefts have happened in South Africa. That country
Speaker 2: is home to a tenth of all sieicad species. In
Speaker 2: the two decades leading up to twenty fourteen, endangered psycads
Speaker 2: there declined ninety percent. In the words of the Global
Speaker 2: Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
Speaker 5: The illicit psycad trade in South Africa has grown so organized, lucrative,
Speaker 5: and harmful that the authorities have identified it as a
Speaker 5: priority wildlife crime alongside rhino, elephant and avaloni poaching.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's gotten so bad that some estimates suggest
Speaker 2: that psychads are now the most endangered living organism in
Speaker 2: the world. In some parts of South Africa, the rarest
Speaker 2: wild cycads are now microchipped just in case they're ever stolen,
Speaker 2: but thefts continue. One allure is, of course their rarity,
Speaker 2: but also their longevity.
Speaker 4: Because they grows so slow, you can keep them probably
Speaker 4: your lifetime, in your living room, and they will never
Speaker 4: outgrow your living room, so it's like a piece of
Speaker 4: vintage art or something. The plant you own is one
Speaker 4: hundred or two hundred years old and therefore very expensive.
Speaker 4: So unfortunately, a lot of people see that as an investment.
Speaker 4: They pay a lot of money for these plants, and
Speaker 4: they keep it their role life. In the end of
Speaker 4: their life, they can still sell the plant. Further.
Speaker 2: This desirability prompted the New York Times back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and five to proclaim that psychads were quote the
Speaker 2: botanical equivalent of a garage full of rolls royces. A cult,
Speaker 2: the Time said, has grown up around these plants that
Speaker 2: include a cadre of bad guys who smuggle for profit.
Speaker 2: These crooks are not drug cartels doing plant crime on
Speaker 2: the side. These are full time psycad syndicates, and they're
Speaker 2: doing the dirty work of smuggling these plants overseas with
Speaker 2: devastating consequences.
Speaker 4: An area it has a couple one hundred plants, maybe
Speaker 4: of some specie, and they have been there for ages,
Speaker 4: of course, but then the people coming and poach them,
Speaker 4: and the regeneration is very low. Usually out of three
Speaker 4: four hundred seeds days. Yes, a few percent that actually
Speaker 4: survive into majority. So when you're going to many of
Speaker 4: these populations, if you take out the big plants that
Speaker 4: set the seed and there is no seedlings to start with,
Speaker 4: then the whole population has collapsed. When you take out
Speaker 4: the mature plants, you basically cut the throat of the
Speaker 4: whole population.
Speaker 2: These plants have been part of the Earth's ecosystem since
Speaker 2: the dinosaurs. They've survived mass extinctions and global catastrophes, but
Speaker 2: they may not survive human greed, which is why. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, agents with the US Fish and
Speaker 2: Wildlife Service courted one of the psychad syndicates responsible. The
Speaker 2: mission was dubbed Opera Botany. Special agents opened a fake
Speaker 2: business called Hugh Enterprises, and, using aliases, began seeking out
Speaker 2: rare and illegal psycads. Their bids caught the attention of
Speaker 2: smugglers Rolf Bauer and Yonfonfieren in South Africa. The men
Speaker 2: were surprisingly open about how they smuggled endangered cycads into
Speaker 2: the US. They poached the plants from the wild, and
Speaker 2: before transporting them over seas, stripped the cycads of their leaves.
Speaker 2: Naked the endangered cycads were unrecognizable, allowing the smugglers to
Speaker 2: mislabel them fooling customs, and it worked. In a July
Speaker 2: two thousand one shipment, the smugglers flew one hundred and
Speaker 2: fourteen rare Encephalardis Muncii under a different name. In the end,
Speaker 2: more than eight hundred and forty thousand dollars worth of
Speaker 2: illegal cycads came through San Francisco International Airport and then
Speaker 2: came the state. The agents invited the smugglers to Las
Speaker 2: Vegas as a thank you. After a few nights of partying,
Speaker 2: the men got into the car that they were told
Speaker 2: would drive them to the airport for a private flight. Instead,
Speaker 2: they got a visit from the fence. The eye don't mean,
Speaker 2: but cases like this are the exception. Most pycad syndicates
Speaker 2: work from Afar, much like the Mexican cartel enlisting poor fishermen.
Speaker 2: Sycad crooks are now hiring locals to do the poaching.
Speaker 2: But in Southern Africa, the ruse is exposing old fault
Speaker 2: lines of race and class. Most of the ringleaders are
Speaker 2: rich and white, but most of the people on the ground,
Speaker 2: those at the greatest risk of getting busted, are poor
Speaker 2: and black. One organized sycad ring in Zimbabwe, for instance,
Speaker 2: was caught stealing eighty one cycads. More than half of
Speaker 2: the poachers were unemployed locals, and the rates they earned
Speaker 2: were a busy just six dollars for a three thousand
Speaker 2: dollars plant, less than half a percent of the total cut.
Speaker 2: We did dozens of interviews for this podcast, and that's
Speaker 2: been a theme that as bad as poaching is, many
Speaker 2: of the people doing it aren't the ring leaders. Many
Speaker 2: are doing it out of desperation. But Anders has a
Speaker 2: story of how he might be able to break that cycle.
Speaker 4: There was a cyca from China, Cycas debuensis, and they
Speaker 4: said the population was like a thousand plants, and when
Speaker 4: it was described, everyone went in to dig it with
Speaker 4: the help of the locals because they needed money and everything.
Speaker 4: And we went in there and we did an inventory
Speaker 4: of the whatever plants were left in the wild, and
Speaker 4: at the time we had less than one hundred plants left.
Speaker 4: So what was the problem. Why why did the local
Speaker 4: dig the plants? Oh they needed money, right, yeah, everyone
Speaker 4: needs money, But for what This was a village shop
Speaker 4: in the mountain, far away from everything. You can't just
Speaker 4: go to a supermarket and buy a new car or something.
Speaker 4: So what do you need the money for? Oh, the
Speaker 4: kids needed school and the closest school was quite far away.
Speaker 4: To get them to school was a major financial burden
Speaker 4: for their village people. So we suggested that what only
Speaker 4: get to school built nearby, actually right in the village.
Speaker 4: And we also raised money from the Psychic Society in
Speaker 4: the US and they provided the books, pencils, and so
Speaker 4: on for their kids.
Speaker 2: And after a lot of wrangling and hobnobbing, the school
Speaker 2: was built. Parents weren't so desperate for money, and the
Speaker 2: kids got to stay home, and the plants well, they
Speaker 2: started to thrive again.
Speaker 4: Now I believe it's over one thousand plants back in
Speaker 4: the wild again. Everyone is happy. If we didn't step
Speaker 4: in at that time, they probably wouldn't survive in the
Speaker 4: long term. You can come in and say don't dig
Speaker 4: this plant, don't do that. You know, you can fence
Speaker 4: it all in and build a cage and whatever, or
Speaker 4: you haven't solved the problem. Unfortunately, not a very common
Speaker 4: approach in nature conservation.
Speaker 2: But Anders thinks that over time that could change. More
Speaker 2: conservationists are realizing that band aids don't work that. If
Speaker 2: we want to stop the cycle, we need to address
Speaker 2: the root causes of poaching. When Yvonne Guzman and his
Speaker 2: fellow fishermen set out on that November day, they didn't
Speaker 2: give much thought to the macroeconomics, the market implications, or
Speaker 2: the international supply chain. They were just trying to earn
Speaker 2: a buck, and as news reports later showed, it appears
Speaker 2: the money led fishermen to a fatal mistake. Reports suggest
Speaker 2: that the men may have agreed to pick succulents for
Speaker 2: not one, but multiple competing cartels. If true, it appears
Speaker 2: that the word got out the fishermen had failed to
Speaker 2: show loyalty, and so that day a boat of goons
Speaker 2: ambushed them. In the end, two men, including Gusman, were murdered. Now,
Speaker 2: admittedly succulents are still a pretty small part of the
Speaker 2: cartel's portfolio, but stories like these are sadly becoming more
Speaker 2: and more common, especially when you consider other plants, especially trees.
Speaker 1: With our research, we found that there's quite a strong link.
Speaker 1: We've teamba crime and drug chaffee king. That link, he's
Speaker 1: really strong, particularly in Central and South America.
Speaker 2: In fact, the experts already have a name for it.
Speaker 1: Narco deforestation is sort of a term that's being used
Speaker 1: more widely now. Forest's being cut for airstrips, for landing
Speaker 1: planes to move product from where it's grown and producing
Speaker 1: into consumer markets. There's forest clearing that happens for cattle ranching,
Speaker 1: for laundering drug money. You've got forest areas being cleaned,
Speaker 1: sometimes even in protected areas, to grow coca.
Speaker 2: And some groups are just cutting and stealing trees for
Speaker 2: the old fashioned reason to make money. Take Columbia. When
Speaker 2: FARK signed a peace agreement a few years ago, smaller
Speaker 2: crime syndicates groups like Los Bontieros and the National Liberation
Speaker 2: Army swarmed in and started clearing land. Just recently, a
Speaker 2: criminal network was arrested for illegally chopping down eight hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty five acres of forest in Central and South America.
Speaker 2: Narco forestation has turned into a cottage industry. The timber
Speaker 2: not only earns cartel's a tidy income, but also helps
Speaker 2: hide the dirty dealings lurking in the shadows.
Speaker 1: So the timber industry could be used as a kava,
Speaker 1: for example, a concealment method. And we've wildlife trafficking. We
Speaker 1: often say that as well that team the companies can
Speaker 1: be used as front companies.
Speaker 2: The reasons for it are by now obvious low risk,
Speaker 2: high reward. But as species disappear, organized criminals are expected
Speaker 2: to make more than one hundred and nineteen billion dollars
Speaker 2: this year in the illegal trade of plants and animals,
Speaker 2: but the ripple effects are worse. The estimated impact of
Speaker 2: these environmental crimes is expected to cost more than half
Speaker 2: a trillion dollars. Slaps on the wrist aren't going to
Speaker 2: stop that kind of money, especially large cartels, which are
Speaker 2: perfectly situated for this kind of business.
Speaker 1: They must have a chain of people who are buying
Speaker 1: sourcing products, consolidating them to make those big shipments. People
Speaker 1: who are organized in terms of liaising, getting the logistics
Speaker 1: together to move that shipment, getting it through a port
Speaker 1: or an airport to move it internationally.
Speaker 2: The bigger the group, the harder it is to find
Speaker 2: who exactly is responsible. In fact, even when we know
Speaker 2: these crimes are happening, it can be hard to stop them.
Speaker 2: Take this case from twenty fifteen. So there is this containership.
Speaker 1: Fully loaded with timber, and it's.
Speaker 2: Set to sail from Peru to.
Speaker 1: The United States to Houston. Was it some final destination.
Speaker 2: Well, on that day it's supposed to depart, everything stops.
Speaker 1: A public prosecutor came on board and tried to seize
Speaker 1: a portion of the timber.
Speaker 2: Apparently the word got out that some of the timber.
Speaker 1: Fifteen percent of the total.
Speaker 2: Is illegal. The inspectors have a chat with the ship
Speaker 2: captain and eventually they come to an agreement.
Speaker 1: Leave port, deliver the timber just returned with that fifteen
Speaker 1: percent portion that was found to be illegal at the
Speaker 1: end of the voyage.
Speaker 2: So the ship leaves port and the investigators they start
Speaker 2: looking deeper into the keyse They.
Speaker 1: Were looking at all the documentation from the timber where
Speaker 1: it was extracted from to verify whether it was legal
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 2: What they find sharks them letting the boat go was
Speaker 2: a huge mistique.
Speaker 1: The entire shipment was actually illegal. Around ninety six percent
Speaker 1: they found was illegal.
Speaker 2: But now it's too late.
Speaker 1: The ship had sailed and eventually it was delivered to
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 2: It's worth noting that this has led to dozens of
Speaker 2: court cases, many happening right now, and it seems likely
Speaker 2: that whoever was behind this illegal harvest, they probably had
Speaker 2: some kind of connection to the people on the inside.
Speaker 1: If a company is paying to get a license in
Speaker 1: a way that is outside of the official process, it's
Speaker 1: very likely that that money has to flow up the
Speaker 1: chain to the individuals signing off on that license or permit,
Speaker 1: which is a person you know sometimes right at the top.
Speaker 2: You know the old phrase follow the money. Well, when
Speaker 2: you follow the trail left by organized criminals, sometimes it
Speaker 2: leads you to the halls of power.
Speaker 1: There've been other allegations in other countries involving very senior officials,
Speaker 1: very high level individuals.
Speaker 2: To political leaders, and some of the companies you love
Speaker 2: coming up.
Speaker 4: I'm in a terrible trouble, and they deserve to get
Speaker 4: into trouble. The corruption was so high level that the
Speaker 4: paperwork could be really seem pristine enough.
Speaker 5: They came in.
Speaker 3: Everybody, we heard, we're being rated.
Speaker 2: We're being rated. Everyone to the back. I'm Summer rain Oaks.
Speaker 2: Join us again next time for Bad Seeds. Bad Seeds
Speaker 2: is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: I'm your host Summer rain Oaks. Lucas Riley is our writer,
Speaker 2: Gabby Watts is our producer, and Amelia Brock is our
Speaker 2: senior producer. Fact Checking is by Savannah Hugely and Zoe Farrell.
Speaker 2: Original music is by Claire Campbell. Sound design and scores
Speaker 2: by Jesse Niswanger. Our show art is by Pam Peacock.
Speaker 2: Development was by Brian Lavin and Jacob Selzer. Special thanks
Speaker 2: for a voice actor Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Brian Lavin,
Speaker 2: Elsie Crowley, Brandon Barr, Virginia Prescott and Jacob Selzer.