Originally published 2019-04-15.
In February 2019 a magistrates’ court in Dar es Salaam sentenced Yang Fenglan, a Chinese businesswoman nicknamed the “Ivory Queen”, to 15 years in prison for leading a criminal network that moved hundreds of elephant tusks out of Tanzania. Two Tanzanian men who supplied her received the same term, and the court ordered her property confiscated. Her 2021 appeal produced a procedural win but not her freedom: the High Court ordered the verdict to be delivered again and kept all three in custody.
The case became one of the best-known wildlife-crime prosecutions in Africa because it reached past poachers and couriers to someone prosecutors described as an organiser. Here is what the court found, who Yang is, and why conservation groups saw the verdict as a turning point.
What the Dar es Salaam court decided
The judgment was handed down on 19 February 2019 at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court. Magistrate Huruma Shaidi found Yang, then 69, guilty together with two Tanzanian co-accused, Salvius Francis Matembo and Manase Julius Philemon. According to AFP, the court found that the trio trafficked 860 tusks between 2000 and 2014, ivory taken from more than 400 elephants.
Each defendant received 15 years for leading or taking part in organised crime. On top of that, the three were fined roughly twice the market value of the ivory, reported by AFP as about US$13 million, with two further years in jail if they failed to pay. Shaidi was blunt about the evidence: “The prosecution proved the case against the accused beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Estimates of the ivory’s value vary between outlets. The BBC put it at around £1.9 million (about US$2.5 million), while Mongabay later reported a figure of more than US$6 million. The difference reflects how prices for raw ivory were calculated rather than any dispute over the tusk count.
Who is Yang Fenglan?
Yang was born in Beijing in 1949 and studied Swahili at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She first went to Tanzania in the 1970s as a translator on the TAZARA railway, the Chinese-built line linking Dar es Salaam with Zambia. After a spell back in China she returned in the late 1990s and built a business life in Dar es Salaam, running a Chinese restaurant and an investment company.
She was also well connected. At the time of her arrest she served as vice-president and secretary-general of the China-Africa Business Council of Tanzania, a body that promoted trade between the two countries. That standing is part of why investigators and campaigners saw her as more than a middle-woman: someone with the contacts, language skills and capital to move a valuable product through ports and paperwork.
How the network worked, and how she was caught
Prosecutors argued that Matembo and Philemon gathered tusks from poachers in different parts of Tanzania and delivered them to Yang, who arranged their sale and shipment to buyers in Asia. Notably, she was never found holding ivory or at a scene of a seizure, and she was not charged with possession. The case rested instead on witness testimony and financial evidence; Mongabay reported that eleven prosecution witnesses testified and that a bank manager presented transaction records.
Tanzanian investigators from a specialist serious-crimes task force, supported by the anti-poaching NGO PAMS Foundation, reportedly tracked her for more than a year. She was arrested in autumn 2015. The BBC reported that the arrest followed a high-speed car chase in Dar es Salaam; accounts differ on whether it happened in September or October.
The trial then dragged on for more than three years, a common pattern in complex trafficking cases where the defence challenges evidence, witnesses must be brought from across the country and documents have to be traced through banks.
Why this case mattered for Africa’s elephants
Tanzania was one of the hardest-hit countries during the poaching surge of the early 2010s. Mongabay notes that its elephant population fell by about 60 percent between 2009 and 2014, driven largely by ivory demand in Asia, where tusks are carved into ornaments, jewellery and status objects.
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Across the continent the picture was similar. The IUCN’s African Elephant Status Report, released in 2016, estimated around 415,000 elephants left in Africa, roughly 110,000 fewer than a decade earlier. Those figures were widely quoted when the Yang verdict came out.
Demand-side policy changed in the same period. China, long the largest consumer market, closed its legal domestic ivory trade at the end of 2017. Campaigners argued that the ban only works if the supply networks feeding illegal sales are also broken, and that requires convicting the people who finance and organise trafficking, not just the poachers who pull the trigger. That is why the Yang case drew so much international attention.
China’s own reaction was notable. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing had “zero tolerance” for wildlife trafficking and supported Tanzania’s investigation and trial, a signal that diplomatic ties would not shield Chinese nationals involved in the trade.
The appeal and where the case stands
Yang’s lawyers appealed, arguing among other things that the written judgment was defective. On 31 May 2021 Judge Edwin Kakolaki of the High Court agreed that the judgment did not properly set out the points for determination. He set it aside and nullified the sentencing proceedings, but he refused her request to be released and sent the file back to the trial magistrate to write and deliver the verdict again.
That distinction matters. The ruling was about the form of the judgment, not a finding that she was innocent. The trial was not to be reheard, and Mongabay reported that all three defendants remained in prison, with the option of challenging the redelivered judgment or appealing again. We have not found reliable public reporting on the final outcome of any later appeal, so claims online that she was freed or deported should be treated as unconfirmed.
Other Tanzanian ivory cases show how unpredictable appeals can be. Two Chinese men caught with 706 tusks, Huang Qin and Xu Fujie, had their 30-year sentences cut to 20 years on appeal in 2021, while brothers Boniface and Lucas Malyango had their convictions quashed in 2020 and were released.
What the case teaches about fighting wildlife crime
Several lessons stand out for anyone following the ivory trade:
- Follow the money. Yang was convicted without being caught with ivory. Bank records and testimony from suppliers did the work, the same approach used against drug and arms networks.
- Agencies have to work together. Tanzania’s task force combined police, wildlife officers, intelligence staff and prosecutors, with NGOs such as PAMS Foundation providing support.
- Sentences send signals. Long prison terms for organisers raise the risk for the people who make the most money from poaching.
- Appeals are part of the process. A conviction is not the end of a case, and headlines about appeals should be read carefully.
PAMS Foundation’s executive director, Krissie Clark, welcomed the verdict on the group’s Facebook page. She credited the Tanzanian government and then-President John Magufuli’s push against wildlife crime and corruption, and argued that intelligence-led enforcement by several agencies must continue because elephants are central to the country’s tourism economy.
One common myth is that ivory can be taken without harming the animal. In practice, poachers almost always kill elephants to remove the tusks, because a large part of each tusk sits inside the skull. Buying antique-looking or “legal” ivory abroad can also feed laundering of fresh ivory, which is why many countries now restrict the trade altogether.
Tanzania’s enforcement drive after 2015 dismantled several poaching rings, and officials have since reported signs of recovery in some elephant populations. The Yang case remains a reference point: proof that the people at the top of a trafficking chain can be brought before a court.
Sources: Arab News / AFP: Tanzania jails Chinese ‘Ivory Queen’ trafficker for 15 years; Mongabay: Tanzania’s “Ivory Queen” denied release after appeal; Wikipedia: Yang Fenglan. Embedded posts: Conservation International (Instagram) and PAMS Foundation (Facebook).
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