WildLeaks

Andrea has over 30 years of experience in conservation projects around the world. As an entrepreneur in 1998 he founded ‘Think Italy’, among the very first e-commerce start-ups in Italy.

He is among the founding members of Wildlife Justice Commission, The Africa Conservancy Foundation, and the creator, project manager of WildLeaks. 

Andrea is among the main protagonists of the Netflix’s documentary ‘The Ivory Game’ and of the NatGeo documentary ‘Sea of Shadows‘.
He is the co-author of the first investigation into ivory trafficking and terrorism (2010-2012), which changed forever the narrative around the issue of elephant poaching and ivory trafficking: “Africa’s White Gold of Jihad: al-Shabaab and Conflict Ivory”.

He is a Fellow of The Explorers Club.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Natural Sciences, a Master’s Degree in Business & Innovation and a BSc in Psychology.

WildLeaks is the world’s first international whistleblower initiative dedicated to wildlife, forest, and fisheries/IUU fishing crime (hereafter wildlife crime). It is a not-for-profit collaborative project, created, funded, and managed by Earth League International (ELI), with a mission to receive and evaluate anonymously information regarding wildlife crime and transform that information into actionable intelligence and concrete actions.

This platform creates a safe space for individuals to share information on wrongdoings without risking their personal and professional lives, all thanks to the guarantee of anonymity ensured by the use of a state-of-the-art secure system built on Tor Technology. 

The information received serves to accomplish WildLeaks mission: disrupt wildlife criminal activities, support law enforcement, and facilitate the identification, arrest, and prosecution of the criminal networks, traffickers, businessmen, corrupt governmental officials, or anyone behind wildlife crime. 

Environmental crimes is no longer an emerging issue, but rather an established and recognized phenomenon that has become “both a specialized area of organized crime and a significant threat to many plant and animal species.”[1]It operates like global multinational businesses introducing local resources into the global market through complex networks, which often involve local businesses and government, sometimes including those tasked with protecting the same wildlife. 

According to the most recent UNEP-INTERPOL assessment report available, released in 2016, environmental crime as a whole is estimated to be valued between USD 91-258 billion per year, making it the 4th largest illegal industry globally.[1]Trafficking and trade of fauna, as a subset of total environmental crime, was estimated at USD 7-23 billion per year.[2] Forest crime came in at USD 51-152 billion and illegal fisheries at USD 11-23 billion.[3]

[1] C. (Editor in Chief) Nelleman et al., “The Rise of Environmental Crime - A Growing Threat to Natural Resources, Peace, Development and Security,” A UNEP-INTERPOL Rapid Response Assessment (United Nations Environment Programme and RHIPTO Rapid Response-Norwegian Center for Analyses, 2016), https://www.interpol.int/News-and-media/News/2016/N2016-073.

[2] INTERPOL-UN Environment, “Strategic Report: Environment, Peace and Security – A Convergence of Threats.”

[3] INTERPOL-UN Environment.

WildLeaks is the world’s first international whistleblower initiative dedicated to wildlife, forest, and fisheries/IUU fishing crime (hereafter wildlife crime). It is a not-for-profit collaborative project, created, funded, and managed by Earth League International (ELI), with a mission to receive and evaluate anonymously information regarding wildlife crime and transform that information into actionable intelligence and concrete actions.

The information received serves to accomplish WildLeaks mission: disrupt wildlife criminal activities, support law enforcement, and facilitate the identification, arrest, and prosecution of the criminal networks, traffickers, businessmen, corrupt governmental officials, or anyone behind wildlife crime. To do so, ELI works with a network of experts including scientists, environmental lawyers, legal and criminal justice experts, and former intelligence officers, to evaluate and validate each submission and determine possible further action. 

The purpose  is to educate a global population about the potential of the WildLeaks platform while identifying possible actions that would allow ELI to enhance that potential to better foster the fight against environmental crimes. 

Environmental crime have a human toll that is historically and inexorably linked to the exploitation of local communities and poor people. The international community is beginning to recognize how destructive wildlife crime can be, that it is truly a serious organized transnational crime, and not only degrades the environmental, but destroys families and economic potential. The cost of wildlife crime to humans takes many forms:

• People dying and getting injured participating in or fighting wildlife crime;
• People encouraged,forced to engage in criminal activities;
• Exploitation of vulnerable and disadvantaged communities;
• Families losing their breadwinners due to death, injury, or incarceration;
• Fueling and funding local conflict; 
• Degradation of the local environment impacting tourism, the local economy, and community livelihoods.

While ivory and rhino horn trade drives the elephant and rhino population rapidly to extinction, an incalculable amount of human lives have also been drastically affected.

Behind a simple ivory or rhino horn trinket for sale in Beijing or Hanoi, a poacher or ranger may be getting killed in Africa, a wife loses her husband, a child becomes an orphan or recruited as a soldier. Ivory consumers, traffickers, and traders need to be held responsible for the social destruction that surrounds wildlife crime. 

NGOs play a crucial role in achieving global awareness that transcends the national political boundaries and facilitates a real collaboration between all the stakeholders. Enhancing communication efforts and engaging governments and the public opinion with facts and new points of view are among the most noteworthy functions of ELI.

Communication is also advocacy for its central role in shaping public perceptions and working to influence public policy in order to achieve positive and long-lasting changes.

We fight back against corruption, the fifth extinction and the exploitation of our natural world while creating awareness and bringing a solution, information gathering, intelligence

Andrea Crosta, the co-founder of ELI, recognized a needed avenue for people in the know to safely report wildlife crime. He became aware that the volume of precious information about wildlife crime, and environmental crime in general, is in the hands of people working and living around the world was huge, but largely untapped. Many of those people were not willing, or inspired, to share information for many reasons, but primarily out of fear for their own personal security, as well as a lack of trust in local authorities. 

Recognizing this enormous potential value, ELI began working on a way to facilitate the sharing and collection of sensitive information. ELI’s team understood the importance of “extracting” such information not only from the many individuals willing to help, but also from those in countries where it is nearly impossible and very dangerous to act on such information, namely countries where pervasive corruption is present and corrupt government officials are involved in, or passive about, wildlife crime. 

In February 2014, with the support of various technology experts, the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Rights and GlobaLeaks, ELI launched WildLeaks.

'I’m not saying ad campaigns and anti-poaching can’t help, but it’s a boy scout illusion to think that you can without intelligence. They are just delaying the inevitable and we’ll lose more species in the meantime.” - Andrea Crosta

Crosta recognized there had been a fundamental practice missing in the international community’s approach to fight environmental crime, a key capability used for centuries to combat global threats and nemesis.INTELLIGENCE.

Intelligence has won wars, protected countries and assets, and by its covert nature, circumvented criminal activity that we won’t ever know or appreciate. It is about mapping the

international criminal network as it travels across borders, illuminating a full portrait of the threat itself in order to combat it pre-emptively and effectively.

The use of dedicated intelligence practices to battle all other global threats has not been applied to environmental crime.

ELI focuses on everything in between: the upper layers of criminal networks - kingpins, the corrupt politicians, the businessmen, and even terrorist groups. These are the criminals we should be seizing. They are the greatest existing threat and are operating with impunity.

We are seeing a form of terrorism against Earth and we need to act with the right weapons

At its core, ELI applies professional intelligence expertise to disrupt the proliferation of wildlife crime around the world. Intelligence is the knowledge – ideally the foreknowledge – that ELI, its partners, and governmental authorities can employ to safeguard wildlife and people, and respond to very concrete threats to the environment. It is our contention that professionally run intelligence and investigative activities are currently the most important tools for fighting environmental crime. The intelligence-led approach is needed to integrate the more traditional “reactive” conservation models with a more proactive, impactful, and disruptive approach.

Our team of collaborators and advisors include professionals who have been working in the intelligence and investigation fields for decades, mostly for top governmental agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, with decades of experience in HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence), undercover operations and analysis.

Although ELI collects intelligence through many and varying means, its WildLeaks Project, the subject of this report, provides potential wildlife crime “whistleblowers” the ability to share information anonymously – information that may not have been shared otherwise.

In 2016, WildLeaks received an anonymous submission with a video showing illegal ivory within China and Hong Kong. 

Despite the significant difficulties in assessing the information, considered by many not-reliable because anonymous, and the lack of funding and time, we managed to put together the right team and launch an undercover investigation in Hong Kong and China. The resulting investigation exposed the areas where illegal ivory opportunistically enters the legal ivory market, and where China’s legal trade system and legal businesses are exploited to launder illegal ivory onto the legal market. 

Following the investigation, a Confidential Intelligence Brief (CIB) was submitted to authorities in both mainland China and Hong Kong. 

While performing this investigation, ELI’s work caught the attention of an important film production project, and ELI’s Executive Director, Andrea Crosta, was filmed as part of the feature Netflix documentary The Ivory Game. The documentary, produced by Terra Mater Factual Studios and Microsoft Co-Founder Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions, in collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, is now considered one of the most important environmental documentaries of the past years. 

Andrea is the co-author of the first investigation into ivory trafficking and terrorism (2010-2012), which changed forever the narrative around the issue of elephant poaching and ivory trafficking: “Africa’s White Gold of Jihad: al-Shabaab and Conflict Ivory”.

The complex international ivory trade, fuelled largely by Chinese demand, also involves elements of the military from the Congo, South Sudan and Uganda.

Nir Kalron and Andrea Crosta conducted a 18 months investigation on the Somali terrorist organization al-Shabaab and the ivory traffic. It was the very first investigation ever on ivory and terrorism.

The investigators, using a unique network of contacts developed during their years as security and intelligence consultants, wanted to collect first-hand information and assess the entity of this specific traffic, beyond anecdotes and rumors. The picture they got was tragic.

After several meetings with traders, traffickers, poachers and even ex-warlords, they found an indisputable financial trail between the illicit trade in ivory and al-Shabaab. The investigation detailed how al-Shabaab acts as a middleman, filling orders from agents in end-user countries in Asia or the Gulf states. It confirmed that the terrorist group pays better than average prices, making them desirable buyers of illicit ivory from small-medium brokers.

Is the world’s first whistleblower initiative dedicated to wildlife crime.

ELI’s goal was to enhance the collection and analysis of information from around the world in order to disrupt wildlife crime. To meet this goal, ELI created a “safe space” online, a secure and anonymous space so that people with information can share that information without taking personal risks, particularly in highly corrupt countries. Wildlife crime offences enrich transnational criminal organizations and local militias, often undermining national security. Corruption, money laundering, and violence are often found in combination with various forms of wildlife crime. 

it is now clear that wildlife crime has wide national and international security implications, but governments tend to see the problem as just an environmental issue and the global fight against wildlife crime is failing. The role of independent NGOs and activists remain crucial, but there is a definite need to unite law enforcement agencies, the public, the activists, the academics, and the policy makers against wildlife crime. A true commitment to the conservation of the world’s environment, biodiversity, and natural resources, requires that all five elements work together.

With this in mind, Earth League International realized that a huge volume of key information about wildlife crime, and environmental crime in general, is in the hands of untapped sources working and living around the world, both inside and outside criminal networks. 

The framework of legal protection, or a safe space in which to report crimes, is sorely lacking and often keeps individuals with evidence of illicit acts from bringing that information to enforcement authorities. It is for this reason that the advent of the WildLeaks Project has proven extremely useful.

We made a report that provides a summary of the existing legal framework for wildlife whistleblower protection; introduces the reader to WildLeaks and the potential for whistleblowers to play a crucial role in fighting back against wildlife crime; lists the most interesting leaks and submissions received so far, and identifies possible actions that would allow ELI enhance the WildLeaks initiative’s potential in fostering the fight against wildlife crime. 

It is a worldwide project that wants to gain more visibility as possible. 

Is it the starting point to combat corruption. Corruption is an epidemic tearing into nation’s foundation and economic wellbeing. It can only be fixed by an entrepreneurial intervention into the widespread and costly problem of corruption.

Other example of it are The Aam Aadmi movement and the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. 

To dismantle corrupted governments and to give to environmental crimes the right importance. 

THE KEY ISSUE: no intelligence work to fight environmental crime.

To fight other global threats, such as: - terrorism - narcotrafficking - transnational organized crime Intelligence is at the center of the strategy to fight back.

In the fight against environmental crime, professional intelligence is almost completely absent. Governments, donors, media and the public are overly focused only on poaching and awareness campaigns.

SOLUTION: as with the fight against other international threats, such as terrorism or drug trafficking, intelligence and analysis and information-gathering should be at the center of our efforts to fight environmental crime.

We face different odds stacked against Earth league. 

NGOs who have something to lose if ELI succeeds and more, how they can contribute to the problem. Convincing funders who can’t seem to grasp the imagination and boldness of their approach. And certainly the psychological residual that brushes with exhaustion: too few and too immense work.

We want to grow and move fast enough to help save species from extinction and ecosystems from collapsing against well-funded and sophisticated criminal syndicates. One of the fundamental obstacles our team face is knowing they can succeed in taking down criminals but lacking resources to initiate a full offense.

For a group whose work can uncover a criminal ring in several months in what’s taken other NGOs and government agencies years and millions of dollars attempting to solve, why isn’t anyone listening?

Why is the international community still pursuing actions that delay, not stop, species from going extinct, forests from being razed, oceans from being emptied?

And when humanity itself depends on their survival?

I also had begun to recognize that the media and NGOs perpetuate a many-times incorrect perspective about environmental crime that limits our ability to do something effective.

Potential outcomes following a submission include:

• Beginning or continuing an investigation with internal ELI teams and/or in collaboration with trusted partners; 
• Sharing information with trusted contacts within select law enforcement agencies and/or with other NGOs; and 
• Sharing the information with media partners.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a crucial role in achieving global awareness that transcends the national political boundaries and facilitates a real collaboration between all the stakeholders. Enhancing communication efforts and engaging governments and the public opinion with facts and new points of view are among the most noteworthy functions of any NGO, and in particular for us.

Communication is also advocacy, which should always be at the core of any environmental organization, for its central role in shaping public perceptions and working to influence public policy in order to achieve positive and long-lasting changes. ELI strives to always engage the stakeholders with courage and humility, to focus on concrete and effective activities, and to remain independent and outspoken.

Since awareness and communication are key aspects of our work, we believe it is important to work with top partners in the film industry to produce content that can reach the most people possible. We are featured in two of the most important documentaries of the past years, the Netflix ‘The Ivory Game’ and National Geographic ‘Sea of Shadows’. We are currently working on four more documentaries and other media projects.

Operation Jaguar - Project's Objectives: 

•In collaboration with IUCN Netherlands and funding from the Dutch Postcode Lottery
•3-year long project (2019-2021)
•Target countries: Bolivia, Suriname, Peru
•The objectives are:
•to unveil the dynamics underneath jaguar trafficking in Target Countries, the main players, the modus operandi, and the paths and methods used to smuggle the jaguar’s parts into mainland China.
•to produce actionable intelligence that government agencies can use to disrupt the supply chain and take out the main drivers and enablers

An Evidence-based approach: Acquisition of photos, videos and audio. 

The networks ELI identified in his intelligence and investigative operations display indicators of organized crime

During an investigation ELI’s teams meet a vast number of people, but not all of them are of the same importance.

PoI are those who are directly or indirectly involved in the trafficking network. 

The identification of PoI comes along with the selection of the most relevant conversations, video frames and photos from the undercover operations.

When elaborating a Confidential Intelligence Brief (CIB) for authorities it is essential to sustain every piece of information ELI provides with solid evidence upon which authorities can base further investigations and actions.

We most obtain fundings from individuals and grants. 

We are willing to do more partnership with different NGO's, we want to offer our service to the organizations that can't do our type of work in order to find a solution together. 

For WildLeaks we started with almost 0 Money and then thanks to a private individual we gained 30k that we spent on marketing campaigns in Africa and the technology. 

200k USD per year, we can start immediately. 

We did not start looking for funds for the Wildleaks project yet this year, so the expenses are just around 40k. Without any course training, any marketing online, any assistants, no travels. This costs are from the monthly fee of the executive director and the crime analyst. Director of Intelligence is not counted in this fee because of no possibility to do capacity buildings for lack of funds. 

Executive Director and Project Manager> He produces the WildLeaks report and follows the overall project and information gathering with the analyst. He will support capacity building and the Implementation of the whistleblowing initiative. 

Crime Analyst>Her work includes but is not limited to studying crime patterns and modus operandi, geographical crimes mapping, database management, social network analysis and social media investigation and analysis. She produce the Confidential Intelligence Briefs and helps the executive director own the WilsLeaks report. 

This project aims to increase the disruption and interdiction of the illegal wildlife trade, strengthen investigative and enforcement functions, enhance prosecutorial and judicial capacity, and develop worldwide information sharing through collaboration, training and tools to combat wildlife trafficking (CWT). We aim to reduce the ability of criminal groups to carry out and profit from poaching and trafficking of protected species and their body parts originating from or transiting Arica, Asia, South America.

We need The Elevate Prize to gain visibility and to let people know of this new platform and to do it so we need exposure and funds. 

Funds will be also used for two workshops in target countries. One for the implementation of the whistleblowing initiative/WildLeaks (which includes also how this tool could be used for anti-corruption), and one for anti-corruption, a 2-day training course done by Mark Davis our director of intelligence with more than 30 years of expertise, former FBI and CIA agent. This will bring a trustee established training to the various participants to aid in anti-corruption work.  By identify trends in corruption, and potential high risk groups. The anti corruption authorities will be better equipped to address corruption and to mitigate it. In this workshops we will mention also whistleblowing as a tool, but not as main topic.

Both of the workshops can be done also thought a video conference in case COVID19 does not permit travels. It is a project that can starts immediately also with travel restrictions. 

Whistleblowers play a critical part in crime prevention, serving as the eyes and ears in otherwise unmonitored corridors. When equipped with technology, whistleblowers engaging with mobile apps can provide one of the most innovative and effective tools to CWT. Through the use of whistleblowing platforms, it is possible to receive confidential information from anonymous entities (including people in airports, shipping companies and individuals with knowledge of corruption).

We need to be known from the public if we want to gain more informations that can be used again corruption and to do so we need funds for online advertising marketing, training courses, a full time assistant crime analyst and events.