The Wildlife Justice Commission strongly believes that combining hard evidence through investigations with effective diplomacy will help governments bring the wildlife traffickers to account and put an end to the devastating illegal trade in endangered and vulnerable species.

Operating globally, our work reflects the transnational nature of the illegal wildlife trade and typically covers multiple countries within each investigation. When selecting a case, we seek to fulfil our mission to disrupt and help dismantle the criminal networks in order to achieve the highest impact.

Our investigations are at the basis of all our work. Meticulous, thoroughly and strictly planned and diligently documented, some take over two years to gather accurate, compelling and actionable evidence of the criminal activities of the networks trafficking wildlife. We make use of case management and intelligence analysis software employed by law enforcement agencies around the world. This allows us to provide our evidence and criminal analyses to law enforcement agencies in a format they are familiar with.

At the core of our work are our investigation team and undercover operatives. With a multidisciplinary background, the team is made up of former law enforcement officers from Australia, the US, the European Union and African and Asian countries and have over 600 years combined law enforcement experience in major case investigations, international wildlife trafficking investigation, surveillance, undercover and intelligence analysis. Our law enforcement experts also train law enforcement agencies in wildlife crime investigation techniques.

“We have seen the scale of destruction first hand and it is horrifying. But it makes us even more determined to make it our business to put an end to theirs.” Wildlife Justice Commission investigator

And unlike the wildlife organised crime syndicates, our ways of work are transparent and fair. All our investigators work with integrity and objectivity: those guiding principles form the basis of our investigation procedures.

Our new original podcast series: “Wildlife kingpin: the rise and fall of Ah Nam”, follows our team of investigators on the hunt for one of Asia’s biggest traffickers of elephant and rhino products.

The podcast provides the first-ever in-depth analysis of a real-life investigation into the dark underbelly of wildlife crime. Go behind the scenes of our 3-year investigation and hear from investigators about the undercover operations and intelligence gathering that helped put this criminal behind bars.

For more about our investigation into Ah Nam download and read our full report the Downfall of Vietnam’s Wolf of Wall Street.

Here you can see how Operation Dragon evolved over time during 2016-2018 and the results that it yielded. Click on the events through the timeline to read on the developments and watch the undercover videos obtained during the investigation, developed in close collaboration with Indian and Malaysian law enforcement agencies and with INTERPOL.