Luxury hunting firm linked to decades of poaching in Tanzania, whistleblowers say

LOLIONDO, Tanzania — Whistleblowers speaking to Mongabay have reported instances of poaching over decades in Tanzania linked to a luxury hunting firm catering to the United Arab Emirates’ elites and royals.

The insiders are from Ortello — sometimes spelled Otterlo — Business Corporation (OBC), which operates shoots in Loliondo, part of Tanzania’s northern Ngorongoro district.

Interviews with the sources, who requested pseudonyms due to safety concerns, provide a rare insight into OBC-organized hunting expeditions, which attracted members of UAE royalty and their associates at least once or twice a year from the 1990s until as late as 2016. They report that some of these trips culminated in live animals being flown abroad.

Exports of live wildlife have been outlawed in Tanzania since 2016 to protect rare animals and birds. In 2022, lawmakers swiftly reversed a controversial decision to lift the ban that had been in place for six years.

The sources’ testimony comes as Tanzanian authorities have served waves of eviction notices affecting Maasai pastoralists in and around Loliondo, as part of efforts to lease 1,500 square kilometers (580 square miles) of ancestral land to OBC.

In 2023, an Amnesty International report condemned government forces for violence and mass arrests that left an estimated 70,000 Maasai without access to their traditional grazing areas.

To verify the whistleblowers’ allegations as fully as possible, we observed OBC’s hunting estate, interviewed nearby villagers and obtained court documents, company filings and shipping records.

Based in Dubai, OBC was registered as a foreign company in Tanzania in 1992 under the business name Royal Safaris Conservation Co. LLC. It is also registered in the secrecy jurisdictions of Panama and the British Virgin Islands.

The company has previously been accused of bribery in Tanzania, resulting in a court case that ended in a plea deal. It has also been implicated in forced evictions of local Maasai.

OBC, its directors and Tanzanian authorities did not respond to individual requests for comment.

Hunters’ hideout

Mongabay observed the OBC’s hunting estate in Pololeti Game Reserve, Loliondo, and documented three sites that whistleblowers reported were used by the Emirati VIPs.

The facilities stand out in the vast savanna grasslands where gazelles, zebras and other native animals roam.

Tourists may flock to this landscape each year to witness its great migrating herds of wildebeest. But OBC makes sure those who prefer shooting rifles over cameras have their needs met.

Its structures stretch across three sites: Chali One, a hilltop complex serving as the main base for visiting elites, complete with a telecom tower and permanent security guards; Lima One, a storage facility and vehicle depot; and the Lima Two airstrip and buildings.

‘The guests’

Khalifa (a pseudonym), joined OBC in the 1990s and worked there for more than 15 years. The former employee told Mongabay that the Emirati tourists were known euphemistically as “the guests.”

Both he and Abdulrazak (a pseudonym), a current employee who has worked at OBC for more than a decade, reported they had witnessed tourists breaking hunting rules on trips organized by the company, killing giraffes and other animals seemingly indiscriminately during their visits to Loliondo, which declined sharply after 2016.

“There are some animals that are not allowed to be hunted; for example, giraffes are not allowed to be hunted, as the law says, but they are hunting [them]. Maybe they are not afraid of Tanzanian laws. They act like children; as soon as they see an animal passing by, they take a car,” Abdulrazak said of the tourist hunters, imitating the sound of gunfire. “After that, they take photos.”

Asked why he did not inform the Tanzanian authorities, Abdulrazak said he did not fully grasp what was happening at first.

“It seemed like they have been doing this for years, but we did not understand what they are doing,” he said.

Abdulrazak and Khalifa claimed that, when they realized the severity of what was going on, they feared speaking out would endanger their lives.

“People were afraid,” Abdulrazak said. “Apart from that, where would we report that?”

Abdulrazak told Mongabay he believed that Tanzania’s government and police had been aware of hunting violations on OBC-organized shoots.

Mongabay asked OBC and Tanzanian authorities for comment on the allegations, and to state whether any special permissions had been granted for these shoots. They did not reply.

In cold blood

At Chali One, the hilltop complex, Abdulrazak said he witnessed a member of Dubai’s royal family shoot a female giraffe that wandered too close to the hunting lodge.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” he told Mongabay.

The Masai giraffe (Giraffa tippelskirchi), Tanzania’s national animal, is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Conservationists blame illegal hunting, disease and land encroachment for its decreasing numbers.

The penalty for killing a female giraffe in the East African country includes fines of up to $15,000 and several years in prison.

Yet according to Abdulrazak, no enforcement action was taken. Instead, he said that meat from the dead animal was sent to Dubai.

Abdulrazak added that he had seen the guest, whom he described as well-known among the camp’s workers, earlier that day.

“He did not introduce himself but we knew him by his name,” he said, insisting that he could recognize the individual in a crowd of 500 people.

Mongabay asked the OBC employee to identify the person from a series of photos, which he did.

Abdulrazak went on to add that such incidents are commonplace among VIP hunters, who, like locals, use guns, snares and dogs to poach giraffes against wildlife regulations that protect the species.

Caged cargo

OBC was founded by General Mohammed Abdulrahim Al Ali, an Emirati. Filings on BRELA, Tanzania’s company register, show he serves as the director of Royal Safaris Conservation Co. LLC., OBC’s business name, alongside countryman Khamis Mohamed Sultan bin Shaheen Al Suwaidi. The two men did not respond to individual requests for comment.

According to Abdulrazak, Al Ali was the key fixer for the UAE elite’s hunting trips in Tanzania until 2016; specifically, he was responsible for arranging the capture, caging and transport of the live animals, mainly lion and leopard cubs. It is unclear how frequent these acts were, or are now.

During this time, Al Ali worked closely with Abdulrahman Kinana, the former vice chairman of Tanzania’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, the OBC insiders said. They added that Kinana acted as the Tanzanian government’s representative during visits from the Emirati elites.

According to the company insiders, Kinana and Al Ali coordinated preparations for the guests’ arrival, instructing security guards to identify the locations of animals of interest. Both men did not respond to a request for comment.

“Abdulrahman Kinana is always there, even when Al Ali visits before the guests [arrive],” Abdulrazak said.

On multiple occasions, these shoots ended with the tourists killing a female animal and caging her offspring at the Lima One storage facility, according to the sources.

“If they see you on the road, they stop you and ask where you have seen baby leopards, lions or ostriches,” Abdulrazak said of the tourists. “They really like baby animals because older animals are difficult to transport.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, residents in Kirtalo and Ololosokwan, two villages near Pololeti Game Reserve, told Mongabay they had witnessed OBC personnel transporting live animals via aircraft in 2022 and 2023. Abdulrazak separately said that OBC had flown live animals from Loliondo.

According to two sources inside OBC, animals have been flown on multiple occasions from the reserve to Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA) in a light aircraft capable of carrying several cages. At the airport, Al Ali and Kinana oversaw the transfer onto a cargo plane destined for Dubai, they said.

“As the guests leave, the cargo plane continues to pick up the animals. Al Ali leaves with the last flight after the cargo plane is gone,” Abdulrazak said.

The Tanzania Airports Authority (TAA), which took charge of the airport in 2023, did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.

Flight or fight

A case at Tanzania’s High Court in 2018 sheds more light on OBC’s operations.

The company entered into a dispute with seven people who claimed to be paid by the company to transport wildlife through the airport. According to documents submitted to the court, which do not explicitly mention the cargo handled, the septet said that their OBC employment was unfairly terminated in 2016 and demanded compensation and severance pay. Kilimanjaro Airports Development Company (KADCO), which until recently ran KIA, had issued them security passes, the documents show.

The court awarded them a comprehensive settlement package, but a later ruling went in OBC’s favor after the company claimed it did not employ the complainants. As evidence, it produced a list of employees it said covered the period 1998 to 2016.

The question of who had recommended KADCO issue them security passes — OBC or a company handling its baggage at the airport — went unanswered.

Close ties remain

Though royal visits have reportedly dwindled since 2016, OBC remains closely linked to the UAE.

Official Tanzanian export records obtained from a global trade database show that in 2023, OBC made 72 shipments of wild animal meat, or bushmeat, from Tanzania to at least four Emiratis, including business leaders and known associates of UAE royalty.

Tanzania legalized bushmeat sales under strict rules in 2020. Mongabay contacted the recipients of the shipments with questions about the exports, including whether the necessary permits existed for them.

None of the four recipients answered any of Mongabay’s questions, and one cited confidentiality as a reason to decline to comment. The Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority also did not respond to Mongabay’s questions about the legality of the exports. Neither did OBC.

Troubling past

The UAE elite’s hunts began in 1992, when the Tanzanian government leased a 4,000-km2 (1,544-mi2) area of land in Loliondo to an UAE national identified as Brig. Gen. Mohammed Abdulrahim Al Ali.

The land, which contains the 1,500-km2 zone the authorities now want to lease, formed what was then called the Loliondo Game Controlled Area. It became a multipurpose area for hunts, conservation and pastoralism.

The deal’s terms were a closely guarded state secret. But it later emerged in a government commission report on corruption that the official who had approved them did so following pressure from higher-ups “on the basis that he [Al Ali] was a friend.”

Following press criticism of the hush-hush agreement, most notably from Mfanyakazi newspaper journalist Stan Katabalo, whose critical articles on the deal ignited a scandal that became known as “Loliondogate,” Al Ali founded the OBC as a vehicle to make the arrangement official.

By 1994, Abubakar Mgumia, the tourism minister at the time, came under pressure as details of the secret accord were leaked. In response, the government established the Marmo Commission that year to investigate the deal in Loliondo. Mgumia was fired, but OBC’s activities were seemingly unaffected.

Two years later, President Benjamin William Mkapa formed the Warioba Commission, a wide-ranging probe into corruption. It, too, found that the OBC’s license was unlawful and backed up the Marmo Commission’s findings that bribery was involved in its allocation.

OBC’s hunting license was revoked in late 2017 amid further bribery and corruption allegations. The natural resources minister at the time, Hamis Kigwangalla, accused Isack Mollel, then OBC’s executive director, of trying to bribe his ministry with donations totaling more than $2 million.

Mollel was promptly arrested and charged with economic crimes. According to an article published in April 2024 in The Atlantic, the case ended in a plea deal.

Land grab

Bearing the brunt of tourist hunting in Loliondo are Maasai pastoralists, who have been repeatedly evicted from their traditional grazing lands since 1959, when they were moved there from Serengeti National Park.

Many of those displaced now live in bomas, temporary thatched-roof dwellings that provide shelter for their families and livestock, which attract foreign tourists for photo opportunities.

Colonial authorities had forced the Maasai out of their traditional homelands in what is now Serengeti National Park and adjoining Tarangire National Park to reserve those areas for organized hunting. They settled in villages on the parks’ outskirts.

Sanctuary proved elusive. Security forces evicted community members in four villages — Arash, Kirtalo, Oloirien and Ololosokwan — during deployments in 2009, 2013 and 2017, according to the rights group Amnesty International.

The crackdown continued after a presidential decree in 2022 announcing that Loliondo Game Controlled Area would become a game reserve (Pololeti), displacing 14 villages in the process.

That year, a deadly confrontation in Ololosokwan, Ngorongoro district, saw police open fire on a crowd of protestors, injuring several Maasai. A police officer was also killed with an arrow.

Days later, Tanzanian authorities announced that Ngorongoro Conservation Area would be converted to a game reserve where the herders are not permitted to live.

Then, in January of this year, the Tanzanian government further escalated its violent campaign against the pastoralists living near protected areas in the Great Rift Valley. Paramilitary rangers fired bullets at Maasai herders and seized cattle in Simanjiro district, near Tarangire National Park.

Mongabay previously reported that, in March 2024, Tanzanian authorities issued new eviction notices affecting Maasai communities. The first wave, for the expansion of Tarangire National Park, targeted the Simanjiro district. The second affected eight villages to expand KIA.