Xuecheng Hou, a wealthy Chinese businessman linked to wildlife contraband trafficking, has emerged as a major player in the illegal trade in rare African timber in sub-Saharan Africa. John Grobler investigates The many faces of Xuecheng Hou Evidence shows Xuecheng Hou and other timber traders are taking advantage of a legal loophole that allows rural Namibians to harvest slow-growing species such as African rosewood, mukula and bloodwood trees for their own use. They harvest most of the logs in south-eastern Angola, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), countries that have banned the export of raw logs, and then transport the timber by truck to Walvis Bay harbour in Namibia. Using Namibia as their backdoor, they are exporting raw logs from the region at a rate of thousands of trees every month. Currently, an estimated 250-300 containers of raw timber are leaving Walvis Bay for China every month, representing a region-wide decimation of a resource valued for its medicinal and nutritional properties. At around US$35,000 to $40,000 per container, this illegal trade is worth between $8.75-million and $16-million per month. Raw logs being transported out of Cuando Cubango province in south-eastern Angola, where illegal logging has stripped the area of any valuable timber The wood-smuggling route is the same as that followed by the illicit trade in rhino horn, ivory and pangolin scales and skins, among others. Containers of illicit timber are often used to hide wildlife contraband, as a recent bust of one such trader with three tons of pangolin scale hidden in a container packed with wood from the DRC showed. Hou’s New Force Logistics transport company – which is not legally registered with Namibia’s ministry of finance, or the ministry of trade and industry – has emerged as one of the largest players in this business. Well-placed sources in the Walvis Bay shipping industry said he was a central coordinator for hardwood trans-shipments, and seemed to be acting as an agent for another China-based buyer. He was seen by two eyewitnesses during late December 2016 and early January 2017 at two industrial yards where illegal trans-shipping from open trucks to containers was taking place. Hou denied that he was the central coordinator or was involved in buying any hardwoods, saying his company was handling the logistics on behalf of Angolan and Zambian clients. “I just do the transport and get my share,” he said. When it was put to him that New Force Logistics was not registered and that he was making himself guilty of tax evasion, Hou insisted Oxpeckers speak to his lawyer, Khadila Amoomo, and ended the call. Amoomo’s legal firm also represents two Chinese nationals caught recently in Windhoek in possession of two rhino horns, as well as Namibian businessman Mox Namwandi and co-accused Darius Shalukeni, caught last year with three rhino horns in their possession in a police sting operation. (See Blink king accused in Namibian rhino poaching.) Xuecheng Hou’s accident-damaged Mercedes Benz parked at the Walvis Bay industrial property where he had been storing and re-packing hardwood. Hou denies that he is a buyer and says that he only was doing the transport Hou, currently on bail of R40,000 on two charges under the Controlled Wildlife and Trade Act, is a close associate of convicted rhino horn trafficker Wang Hui, it has been established in the course of a 30-month ongoing Oxpeckers investigation into wildlife trafficking in Namibia. Hui and three other Chinese nationals are serving 14 years in jail for attempting to smuggle 14 rhino horns to China in 2014. Hou was identified as the person renting an industrial yard in Walvis Bay where raw logs were stored and trans-shipped into containers without local customs’ supervision, as required of legal in-bond facilities. Hou’s accident-damaged Mercedes Benz with registration number N889 999W is still parked at this property that otherwise seemed abandoned by mid-January 2017. After his illegal operations at this site were exposed, he kept moving his operations to other industrial properties in the same area. Seemingly irritated at the repeated exposure of his activities on social media by this reporter, he publicly insisted that people “… respect the government and its laws”, eventually lashing out with racial taunts and threatening “… to beat you and shit”. Exotic hardwood is the single-most smuggled commodity in the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. But because the trees were cut (albeit illegally) in Angola and the DRC, Namibian border officials have turned a blind eye to the abuse of transit permits and local forestry regulations forbidding the transport of raw wood to prevent the spread of borer-beetle and other pests.