Disrupting Illegal Wildlife Trade: Have We Followed the Money?

30 Oct 2025 12:03 PM

Five years ago, the Financial Action Task Force issued a call-to-arms for greater focus on the financial dimension of illegal wildlife trade. What results have been achieved?

As global leaders gathered for the first London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) back in 2014, ambition was running high. The first high-level meeting of its kind saw a set of powerful commitments from delegates ‘to act together to bring . . . [IWT] to an end’. Associated money laundering featured – but only in passing. At the time, policy and practical action to apply ‘follow the money’ principles to these crimes were in their infancy, with the power of financial tools to target IWT yet to be fully recognised.

From around this time, the authors’ and other early research across East and Southern Africa highlighted the significant potential of parallel financial investigation to help law enforcement move beyond charging low-level poachers with possession to target higher-level criminal actors. These actors, a decade back, could rest easy in the knowledge that few attempts would be made to trace the money trail leading directly to them. The private sector, for its part, remained largely unaware of the risks and financial characteristics of this criminal activity. But all this was about to change.

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