A large percentage of individuals involved in wildlife crime regularly engage in legitimate-seeming wildlife trading activities to transform illegally acquired wildlife into products which can be openly and “legally” traded (van Uhm, 2018b). The legal and illegal trade are tightly interwoven (FATF, 2020 ). Crimes committed by individuals involved in legitimate wildlife industries and services can include, among other offences:

• Fraud
• Document forgery
• Tax evasion
• Money laundering
• Non-compliance with safety and other regulations
• Mis-invoicing

Individuals acting in legitimate industries are experts on rules, regulations and loopholes. Criminal elements can take advantage of these loopholes and manipulate the rules to launder illegally acquired or traded species into the legal trade. This is similar to how unscrupulous accountants, lawyers and other professionals can facilitate money laundering in global financial systems ( FATF, 2018).

These criminals are known to work closely with organised crime networks throughout the supply chain, utilising their legitimate wildlife trading businesses to hide the illicit origin of wildlife and the profits gained. Companies they run provide the infrastructure required to move wildlife from the illegal to legal domain, and benefit from the ability to operate openly and fully utilise global finance and transport networks.

These criminals are key elements in larger networks functioning across the supply chain, from source countries to destination markets.

Over 30 percent of wildlife crimes in the Europe Union are associated with criminals operating in the “legal” wildlife industry (Wyatt, 2020 ).