By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
OR Tambo International Airport is a major trafficking hub for “all sorts of illicit commodities”, a report by Global Initiative has found.
The report said the illicit items that moved through the airport was particularly wildlife products.
“Between 2016 and 2018, OR Tambo recorded the second-largest number of wildlife trafficking seizures of all African airports and the most for rhino horn and drugs,” the report states.
The report, written by Alastair Nelson, a senior analyst at Global Initiative, is titled ‘Convergence of wildlife crime and other forms of transnational organised crime in Eastern and Southern Africa convergence of wildlife crime’.
Research for the report was conducted between January 2021 and August 2022.
It used 105 interviews with government officials, staff from multilateral or bilateral organisations, NGO workers and individuals in the private sector. All the people interviewed work in roles combating wildlife crime and organised crime in eastern and southern Africa.
Although OR Tambo airport was not specifically researched for the report, it was mentioned twice during interviews around the illegal abalone trade.
Two incidents were highlighted.
“The first incident involved bribes paid directly to customs officers to allow marked bags to pass through a scanner undetected onto a flight to Hong Kong,” it said. “These bags contained dried abalone.”
Around R1 500 was allegedly paid per bag, which the report said was a relatively low amount of money for this illegal act.
“This is an exceptionally small amount of money to be taking the risk of passing illegal goods through a scanner and onto a plane. It suggests that this is a regular occurrence, “said one of the Global Initiative investigators.
The second incident involved a private-sector shipping agent who exports goods through the airport.
“During an active investigation, an undercover source was party to a shipment of dried abalone being dropped at this shipping agent’s premises for special packaging in order to be shipped undetected to Hong Kong via airfreight.”
The undercover source also photographed other items being exported from OR Tambo airport. These items included rhino horn and drugs.