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A number of Botswana Community Trusts are unwittingly part of a huge international wildlife criminal network - Sunday Standard investigations have revealed. Documents passed to the Sunday Standard have revealed how the trusts are used as "grey" nodes (legal players who participate in illegal activities) in criminal hunting schemes by the international wildlife mafia.

A fromer police officer who was kicked out of the Namibian Police after being arrested on rhino-poaching and firearms charges has lost a Supreme Court appeal about his dismissal. Former detective inspector Wersimus Haipa’s appeal to the Supreme Court was dismissed in a judgement delivered on Friday. Haipa appealed against a High Court judgement in which an application by him to have his discharge from the police reviewed and set aside was dismissed in May this year.

The blurb for an editorial in The Namibian newspaper on 9 November read: "From Kavango to Kunene, down south across the breadth and width of Namibia, the scramble for the country’s mineral, oil and energy sources is in overdrive." The article ended: "Government officials have turned Namibia into an unsustainable El Dorado with a vicious cycle of short-term searches for riches dishing out mining exploration licences to a select few." As you read this, graders, excavators and tipper trucks are hacking a road through three conservancies famous for their conservation of endangered,…

Two Namibian community conservancies and a tourism operator have turned to the courts to block development of a tin mine. The conservancies say the environmental impact assessments for the open-pit mine are flawed and will disturb wildlife, including critically endangered southern black rhinos. In a similiar case in the //Huab Conservancy, a copper mine disturbed wildlife in the area, forcing rhino-based tourism to shut down.

Two men arrested by the Namibian Police Force (NamPol)'s Protected Resources Unit for the possession of rhino horns and abalone products at the beginning of this month, have been granted bail.

The prosecutor general has bank accounts and six cars belonging to a Chinese citizen and a Namibian man facing charges of possessing and trying to export the shellfish abalone from Namibia in her sights.

The State yesterday painted a picture of the pecking order among the four Chinese men accused of trying to smuggle 14 rhino horns out of Namibia. Li Xiaoliang, Li Zhibing, Pu Xuexin and Wang Hui yesterday appeared in the Windhoek Regional Court in Katutura for the continuation of their trial. They are charged with trying to smuggle 14 rhino horns worth more than N$2.3 million and a leopard skin valued at N$50 000 out of Namibia. The items were found in two suitcases at Hosea Kutako International Airport on March 24 last year.

State prosecutor Simba Nduana yesterday told one of the Chinese men standing trial in Namibia’s largest rhino-horn-smuggling case that he and one of his co-accused had concocted a “cock and goose” story for the court that was filled with inconsistencies. Li Xiaoliang was cross-examined in the Windhoek Regional Court as the trial of Xiaoliang and his co-accused, Li Zinbing, Pu Xuexin and Wang Hui, continued.

A Chinese national and a Namibian appeared before the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday on charges of dealing in protected game products and possession of controlled wildlife products with a combined valued of N$320 000. The two men, Zhi Geng (37) and James Barron Wallace (47), were not asked to plead to the charges Geng was arrested in Windhoek on February 1 for dealing in 1.5kg rhino horn valued at N$232 000 and abalone valued at N$91 000. Wallace is charged only with the possession of abalone.

The discovery of close to 100 kilogrammes of dried abalone and more than a kilogramme of rhino horn pieces in Windhoek this week landed a Chinese citizen and a Namibian man in the dock in the Windhoek Magistrate's Court yesterday.