This article is part of a series on careers in fighting financial crime and opportunities to learn and study with the Basel Institute. Our colleague Joseph Mihajason Rakotondramanana shares his professional journey, from the private sector and his early steps as an analyst in Madagascar to his current role as a Specialist in Financial Investigation with the Basel Institute’s Green Corruption Programme.

"The link between financial crime and environmental harm is too often ignored. All the more reason to act."

The paper investigates the role of criminal networks in fostering illegal wildlife trade (IWT), and how these relational structures interact with transnational organized crime. The paper frames these topics within the debate around the opportunistic or organized nature of IWT. The aim is to understand how chaotic behaviors can transform into an ordered and organized strategy.

The sixth event in the Corrupting the Environment webinar series discussed waste trafficking, a topic that receives little attention despite generating significant criminal proceeds (estimates suggest up to USD 12 billion per year). In addition to the financial costs, waste trafficking has enormous impacts for the environment, including from pollution or degradation, and inhibits development by fuelling corruption and poverty in some countries.  

Published under our Green Corruption programme, this is a case study about a South African fishing company, Hout Bay Fishing Industries, that overfished lobster and other protected fish in deliberate breach of government-established quotas. The case study contains numerous important lessons for those seeking to follow the money in large wildlife trafficking cases.

Please join us and our partners at the OECD on 27 January at 13:00 CET for a multi-disciplinary panel discussion on illicit trade in natural resources.

The event is part of the Corrupting the environment monthly dialogue series, which explores creative solutions to burning issues of environmental degradation through the lens of financial crime and illicit trade.

The Basel Institute's Green Corruption programme is launching an ambitious two-year research collaboration with the Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC) project. The aim is to fill crucial gaps in understanding and addressing the corruption that fuels illegal wildlife trade and other threats to our planet.