GQ South Africa – September 2019

SEPTEMBER 2019 / 85

It hadtakenvebulletstobring

theanimaldown,thenalone

redfromnear-point-blankrange.

Now,asChumlongLemtongthai

watchedthecreaturegiveupits

last,painedbreaths,hesawonly

onething:money.

‘Let’sgo,’hesaid,instructing

hisassociatestoclamberoverthe

corpse,plantthemselvesastridethe

headandremovetheanimal’stwin

hornswitha fewthrustsofa bone

saw.Lemtongthai,who’dgrown

upinailandbuthadmadehis

waytoSouthAfricatostrikeit

richonhuntslikethisone,moved

deliberately,keenlyawarethatthe

workthatmatteredmosttohim

wasjustbeginning.Heknewthat

a smallfortunewashistobewon.

Butrst,hehadtospiritthehorns

outofAfricaandintothehandsof

hisassociatesinLaos.Oncethere,

they’dbefeddowna supplychain

thathehelpedtocontrol.

Aerthehornsreached

theblackmarketinChinaor

Vietnam,theywereshavedinto

a nepowderandpackagedinto

tiny vials, and then sold to those

who cling to ancient beliefs about

their power to heal all manner

of maladies – like rheumatism,

perhaps, or maybe cancer.  e

price for such a specious remedy

is steep. Rhino dust –sometimes

stirred carefully into tea, other

times ingested directly – can

fetch R923 000 per kilogram. For

Lemtongthai, that meant nearly

R2.8 million for a single horn.

Illicit though his scheme was,

there was nothing particularly

clandestine about Lemtongthai’s

behaviour out here in the African

bush. He motioned for a young lady

• a  ai stripper named “Joy”– to
  approach the dead rhino. Joy had
  dressed for the hunt in tight jeans
  and a purple tracksuit jacket. She
  was given the ri e, and she moved
  in beside the animal, kneeling with
  the gun in hand. She  ashed a wide
  smile for a waiting camera. It was
  critical that she appeared to be
  the one who’d bagged the rhino.
  A photo of Joy and her prize
  would help with that.
  Lemtongthai had been
  tra cking protected species for over
  a decade –but lately had gathered an
  increasing degree of in uence in
  a vast world of poachers, smugglers
  and other merchants of animal
  death. He’d had a gritty start in life,
  selling fruit in a street market in
  Bangkok. But his fortunes turned
  around when he fell in with a pair
  of men who dealt in the bones
  of exotic cats, which can also
  be ground and are sold in vast
  quantities. Under their tutelage,
  Lemtongthai learnt the tricks of
  the tiger-bone trade: procuring the
  carcasses, boiling them to separate
   esh from bone, then wrapping
  the skeletons in plastic bags and
  shipping them to a major buyer in
  Laos for R6 392 a kilogram.
  From there, the bones would
  move east, across the Laotian
  border into Vietnam, or north,
  into China. Soon he set himself up
  in South Africa and used the same
  techniques to begin moving large
  quantities of lion bone back to
  Asia. He was rarely troubled by the
  government export quotas on lion
  bone – ranchers and local o cials

hardly enforced them

• and Lemtongthai could earn
  R14 000 for a bag of bones.
  He found buyers for even the
  teeth and claws, which couriers
  smuggled on  ights to Bangkok
  (thanks, allegedly, to the help of
  corrupt airline employees).
  Lemtongthai drove a Hummer,
  smoked high-quality weed,
  gambled in the casinos at Sun
  City near Joburg, and became
  a regular customer at the Flamingo
  Gentlemen’s Club in Pretoria


• a strip club  lled with dancers
  imported from northern  ailand.
  But he wanted more. Demand
  for rhino horn was soaring in Asia,
  and in 2009 Lemtongthai leapt
  at the opportunity to expand his
  business.  e work would be risky:
  South Africa imposed long jail
  terms for anyone caught poaching
  or trading the animals. But
  Lemtongthai knew about a game-
  changing loophole he could exploit.
  At the time, under South African
  law, sportsmen were permitted to
  hunt one rhino per year and take
  the head as a personal trophy.
  And so it was that Lemtongthai
  cooked up a simple scheme: he’d
  hire ringers to pose as trophy
  hunters, obtain legal export
  certi cates from the Convention
  on International Trade in
  Endangered Species (CITES), and
  ship the horns to Laos via  ailand.
  Rather than adorn somebody’s
  wall, they’d be ground down to
  serve more lucrative purposes.
  Lemtongthai made deals with
  crooked ranch owners. One day,
  he showed up at the Flamingo
  and o ered the girls about
  R7 000 apiece to join the charade.
   at’s how several of the Flamingo
  strippers, including Joy, were
  transformed into the world’s
  unlikeliest big-game hunters.
  Soon they were regularly shuttling
  in Lemtongthai’s black Hummer
  from the strip club to a ranch
  a couple of hours away.
   e grim business was booming
  until the scheme hit a snag. In
  February 2011, customs o cials
  at Suvarnabhumi Airport stopped
  a package of rhino horns that had
  separated from its CITES >>

THE THUNDER

CRACKOF

A RIFLESHOT

HUNG FOR A

FAINT SECOND

IN THEAIR.

THEN,WITH

A TREMENDOUS

TUMBLE, THE

WHITE RHINO

HITTHE DIRT.

From an outpost in northeastern

Thailand, a couple of shadowy

men have for years been running

the world’s most elaborate

poaching ring – earning an

enormous fortune by destroying

some of the planet’s most exotic

creatures. How can an enterprising

vigilante finally bring down an

untouchable smuggling syndicate?

gq.co.za