Earth League International

Description

Earth League International, ELI, also known through its whistleblowing initiative WildLeaks, is an investigative non-governmental organisation. It treats environmental crime as never isolated, because the people who traffic ivory, pangolins, timber or fish are frequently the same individuals involved in money laundering, corruption, drug trafficking and human trafficking. ELI focuses on what it calls Environmental Crime Convergence, the point where environmental and other serious transnational crimes meet, and applies professional intelligence tradecraft to expose the networks behind it.

Its investigators and undercover operators work in the field, from the Amazon to trafficking hubs across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. They build relationships and cultivate sources inside criminal networks over months or years, to document poaching, trafficking, illegal logging, fishing and mining, deforestation and land grabbing, and to trace how the profits are moved and laundered. The organisation describes itself as a fact-finding body rather than an advocacy group: it investigates, verifies and reports. It produces Confidential Intelligence Briefs, Situational Reports and Target Profiles for law enforcement, government agencies and policy makers in the United States and abroad, and custom intelligence and field research for foundations, research centres and think tanks.

Over more than a decade, its work has exposed high-level traffickers, middlemen and corrupt officials across more than thirty countries. It also supported law enforcement operations and arrests, contributed to official investigations, and reached broad audiences through media collaborations, including a magazine cover story and documentaries. Its team includes former officers of United States law enforcement and intelligence agencies alongside criminal-network analysts, geospatial-intelligence specialists and financial investigators.

Earth League International is a registered non-profit, tax-exempt charity in the United States, based in Los Angeles, California.