This wealthy 84 -year -old businessman had more than 2000 white rhinos, or about 15% of the world’s population of this species poache for his horns selling at gold prices.
“He was released on bail and is to appear on December 9,” a spokesman for Hawks said after a hearing on Tuesday in the Pretoria court with five other suspects.
Its 7800 hectare property, less than 200 km southwest of Johannesburg, was bought in 2023 by the NGO African Parks which has since transferred several groups of them to other parks.
“The suspects would have requested permits to sell and buy locally rhino horns which were in reality intended for the international black market, in Southeast Asia,” said a police statement upon the start of the investigation in 2017.
60,000 dollars per kilo
“The identified fraudulent permit system concerns approximately 964 rhino horns,” he adds. The price per kilo of these horns, made up of keratin, reached on the black market 60,000 dollars, their export is prohibited by Pretoria.
John Hume, who said that he had devoted 150 million euros to the preservation of rhinos in his reserve over the years, was the lawyer of his legalization to finance the protection of rhinos.
Like ivory, rhino horns are used by traditional medicine for their supposed aphrodisiac properties, but they are also a brand of social prestige.
Legalize trade
Met by AFP in 2023 at the time of the auction of his property, he said he had the “solution” to the conservation of the rhinos with the legalization of the international trade in horns.
“But the rest of the world and the NGOs do not agree and we are losing the war (…) Unfortunately, on the black market, the horn of a dead rhino is always worth more than a living rhinoceros,” he regretted.
In 2024, 420 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
