Takeaways on how to use China's anti-money laundering laws to fight illegal wildlife trade?

Speaker: Linda Chou, Anti-Money Laundering Project Manager, TRAFFIC China.

• When anti-money laundering measures are applied to combat illegal wildlife trade, it would allow the law enforcement to track down and identify a wider array of individuals and higher-level actors within the criminal network. Generally, penalties for money laundering are harsher than for wildlife crime in many countries. Wildlife and forest crime activities would be disrupted by confiscating/recovering illicit profit and assets/property.

• The wildlife crime related provisions in China’s Criminal Law includes (1) Article 151 Smuggling of national protected wild species and their products; (2) Article 341 Illegal hunting, killing, purchase, transporting, and selling of national protected wild animals; and (3) Article 344 Illegal logging/harvesting, destructing, purchasing, transporting, and processing national protected plants.

• China’s Money Laundering Offence system is all-crime approach which consists of three crimes: (1)Article 191 Laundering Proceeds of Specific Serious Crimes; (2) Article 312 All-Crimes Laundering; and (3) Article 349 Laundering Proceeds of Drug Offences. The application of these AML provisions are based on predicate crime, the acts used for concealment and disguise and whether the nature and source of the criminal proceeds have changed.

• Article 191 can be applied to the money laundering done by others and self-money laundering in wildlife smuggling cases; Article 312 applies to the purchase of wildlife obtained by illegal hunting; Article 312 can only be applied to people who assist the proceed concealment for the principal offenders carrying out illegal hunting, selling, transporting, and processing wildlife and their products.

The full recording of the presentation from the 18 September Follow-the-Money working group meeting is available here: