PEOPLE IN THE NEWS : The rise and fall of ‘The Devil’

Dar es Salaam. The Elephant Action League, which fights wildlife crime across the world, said ‘The Devil’ ran an ivory trafficking network across five African countries: Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia, Mozambique and southern Kenya.

And his crimes were the focus of a Netflix documentary film, ‘The Ivory Game’, produced by renowned US actor Leonardo DiCaprio. They call him ‘Shetani’ – the man known to the world as Tanzania’s most notorious elephant poacher. Meet Boniface Matthew Maliango.

A few ordinary Tanzanians had probably ever heard of him. Yet in the jungle of poachers he was one of their smoothest operators. And they did not call Maliango ‘Shetani’ (‘The Devil’) for nothing.

On Friday, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for running an ivory trafficking network across five African countries. The 47-year-old is considered the biggest ivory trafficker in the whole of east Africa, where elephant numbers have plummeted on an industrial scale over the past few years.

In his risky shenanigans, he played hide and seek with the authorities for years, but the long arm of the law finally caught up with him on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam in October, 2015. At the end of a spirited manhunt, the mustached runner was netted together with his Lucas Mathayo Maliango and Abdallah Ally Chaoga. The three were reportedly arrested while attempting to smuggle tusks worth more than Sh1.8 billion ($850,000). They all faced the same fate.

Granted, this man was no ordinary poacher.

Here is a well-connected man who had ties with the ‘Ivory Queen’ – the 66-year-old Chinese citizen Yang Fenlan, who is currently on trial in the country for illegally trafficking 706 elephant tusks between 2000 and 2014.

It is not exactly known when the two met – or started dealing. But the ‘Ivory Queen’ is thought to have come to Tanzania as a Swahili-Chinese translator in 1975, when China began to build the Tanzania Zambia Railway (Tazara). But she is believed to have begun trafficking ivory as far back as 2006.

Before the Transnational Serious Crimes Investigation Unit Task Force bagged Maliango, he is also believed to have worked with Ms Glan on multiple occasions.

Beyond the borders of Tanzania, ‘The Devil’ grabbed the attention of renowned American actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The hunt for Maliango and the Ivory Queen features in the 2016 Netflix documentary “The Ivory Game”, on which Di Caprio was an executive producer.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper describes the documentary as an “an angry…committed, valuable film” that brings a new urgency to an old subject: the ivory trade, which is threatening the world’s elephants.

“The film persuasively argues that it is all but out of control: so much so that elephants are in danger of being wiped out in the wild in just a matter of years. One of the biggest mammals on Earth might vanish. And the market forces driving the trade stem from just one country: China, where there is a huge appetite for luxury goods made of ivory,” The Guardian noted in its review of the film.

Mustache-twirling culprit

In the film, Maliango is the mustache-twirling culprit described by the producers as ‘The Kingpin’ of a poaching syndicate – the number one wanted poacher.

Perhaps he is in the imaginary world of DiCaprio and company, as he is in real life: a shadowy, never-even-photographed figure.

He’s discovered for nearly two hours in the film, in hushed tones. Suddenly, ‘Shetani’ is finally arrested, but the investigative work leading to this triumph mostly occurs off screen.

One never learns anything much about him or his operation — he just gets endlessly talked about, and then suddenly he’s in handcuffs.

His arrest in a warehouse in Dar es Salaam came as a surprise. Yet, for the government, it marked the hallmark of a relentless war on poachers.

“This is a resounding victory for Tanzania. We will not rest until we completely eliminate poaching in this country,” the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr Adelhelm Meru, told The Citizen.

The excitement was understandable, if not justifiable.

Here is an apparently iron-willed man whose piercing eyes give the impression of a ruthless character. Producers of ‘The Ivory Game’ say he did not just kill an animal – he killed elephants. “It’s tough and they are connected. It’s destroying families,” they note in the official trailer.

Serious and smart

What’s also telling about just how serious and smart ‘The Devil’ was, is the fact that for all these years that he’s been mysteriously evading the law, he managed to run over 15 poaching syndicates operating throughout Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia, Mozambique and Kenya. And he did so with impunity for years.

A senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity soon after the highly publicised arrest in 2015 described him as Tanzania’s “enemy number one”.

“It’s a major breakthrough in the fight against poaching syndicates in the country. After the arrest of the ‘Ivory Queen’, we have been hunting him since June of 2014.

He has evaded arrest again and again, slipping away at least seven times, but this time we caught him, in a wild manhunt after informers reported his whereabouts on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam,” said the official. He said ‘The Devil’ was a major supplier of weapons, ammunition and cars to poaching syndicates operating across the country and beyond.