South African authorities have accused captive rhino breeder John Hume of leading one of the largest rhino-horn trafficking syndicates on record and using domestic reporting requirement to conceal his illicit activity, the Financial Times reported. 

Hume, long known as the country’s “rhino baron,” appeared in Pretoria magistrates court last August alongside five co-defendants after a seven-year investigation by the Hawks, South Africa’s elite anti-organized-crime unit. Prosecutors allege the group attempted to traffic 964 rhino horns valued at roughly $14 million to buyers in Vietnam and China and the defendants face 55 charges, including racketeering, fraud, violations of biodiversity law, theft, and money laundering, the FT said. 

To conceal their illicit activity, Hume and his associates falsified sales permits for legal domestic sales of rhino horns only to secretly channel the horns to Asian markets, where the banned exports could be sold at higher prices, according to allegations cited by the FT. International sales of rhino horns were banned in 1977 by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) after it became clear that Asian demand was driving poaching in Africa and threatening rhinos with extinction, according to the report. 

Hume’s alleged scheme also relied on fake South African buyers, the FT said. Prosecutors claim some listed purchasers lacked both the means and the intention to buy rhino horn, and that identity documents were allegedly bought or stolen to support permit applications. 

Rhino horn trafficking has long been driven by demand in Vietnam and China, where horns have at times fetched as much as $60,000 per kilogram, according to the report. That price differential creates a major arbitrage opportunity between South Africa’s lower-priced legal domestic market and banned export markets in Asia.

The case is especially striking because Hume bred roughly 2,000 rhinos in captivity, at one point owning nearly one in 10 rhinos in Africa, the FT noted. That made him both a major figure in conservation and, authorities now allege, a central figure in a wildlife-trafficking network.

Read more at the Financial Times