Eliode Bakhole

Eliode Yalire Bakole is a researcher from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, based at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and affiliated with the Global Risk Governance program at the University of Cape Town.

His research focuses on environmental crime, wildlife trafficking, and the criminal networks behind them. His current four-year project, Rhino Horn Laundering: Green Crimes and Criminal Networks in South Africa, is a subproject of the Greenlaund project, which is funded by the European Research Council and run by Utrecht University. Through it, he seeks to identify the different forms of rhino horn laundering, understand how the actors involved interact, and assess the environmental harms that result.

His project has three phases, each built on a different research method. In the first phase, he processed a body of environmental crime cases and used quantitative cluster analysis to study criminogenic interactions during laundering. The resulting clusters show how crime groups, corporations, and state actors interact in ways that enable wildlife laundering, including rhino horn. In the second phase, he is conducting qualitative, multi-sited field research in South Africa to gain an in-depth understanding of how rhinos and rhino horn are laundered on the ground. In the third phase, he will analyse and triangulate the empirical findings, link them to his theoretical model, and apply crime script analysis to map the laundering process step by step.

His work will produce an analysis of the environmental harms caused by rhino horn laundering. It will also produce concrete policy recommendations aimed at specific stages of the laundering chain, to inform efforts against wildlife crime in South Africa and beyond.