Social network analysis applied to illegal wildlife trade between East Africa and Southeast Asia

This report presents the findings of a novel application of social network analysis (SNA) to study a criminal network surrounding an East Africa-based wildlife trafficker. This technique focuses on understanding structural, functional and sociometric characteristics of networks by mapping social interactions between individuals and groups. Particularly, the research studies how wildlife trafficking happens, and, in doing so, offers several promising avenues to curb it. SNA makes it possible to deconstruct the criminal network in question and identity its key individuals, operative functions and flows of goods, information and money. In turn, this can sustain the activities of investigators and prosecutors to discover new leads and suspects, or to better understand the meaning of financial and information flows. The research has been conducted under a project of PMI Impact aimed at stopping corruption from fuelling illegal wildlife trade (IWT) between East Africa and Southeast Asia. The results show that by combining SNA (a primarily quantitative method) with network ethnography (a qualitative method), we can gain important new insights into the structures, functions and mechanisms of crime networks engaged in IWT.