Poster: Valentin Sigalov // Prokhor Zakharov
Recently, I've read about Interpol* posting a list of top-wanted environmental criminals. Listing 9 fugitives, these men have committed all kinds of illegal acts, all with the same thing in mind - earning money from harming the environment.
So what exactly is an environmental crime anyway? It's basically any crime that harms the environment directly. When I first heard of the term, I thought it a sort of ‘side effect’ of regular crime, but no. This is straight up comic-villain stuff. Ahmed Kamran, one of these fugitives, is charged with smuggling dozens of live animals from Tanzania to Qatar on a military plane. Sergey Darminov, for another, has been accused of illegally crab fishing in Russia netting 450 million dollars for his organization. Most interesting, though, is Mr. Giacobone, who illegally (obviously) transported and dumped toxic waste - poisoning water beds, carrying guns and assaulting a cop in the process. Other crimes included poaching of ivory and illegal logging.
Honestly, I've found this to be both surprising... and not. I never really thought of organized crime syndicates and structures revolving around earning tons of money from shitting on the Earth they live on. Yet it doesn't surprise me. Humans do anything for money.
Obviously I'm in full support of the criminals being caught and persecuted. Unfortunately, though, these men are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ecocriminals.
*International Criminal Police Organization. Similar to the UN in principle, it is an internationally funded, politically neutral organization aimed towards fighting crime.
Guardian Source
NBC Source
Tip of the iceberg is right. Criminals often make a shrewd business calculation of risk vs. potential profit that is hard to overcome. What can we do about it?
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