Squeezing the Financial Flows

Kenyan telecom giant Safaricom has joined forces with a coalition of international technology, payments, and cryptocurrency firms to dismantle the financial networks driving the illegal wildlife trade. The initiative was announced at a recent event convened by Prince William and The Royal Foundation’s United for Wildlife taskforce.

According to a report, the coalition brings together technology giants, including Google, Meta, Tiktok, and Alibaba. The companies have committed to completely eradicating wildlife trafficking from their platforms using artificial intelligence (AI)-driven detection and prevention systems to catch illicit listings before sales take place.

While social media and e-commerce platforms focus on front-end listings, the battle is simultaneously moving to the financial back-end. Illegal wildlife trafficking is an extensively lucrative enterprise, with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimating it generates up to $23 billion annually. It is a driving factor behind putting an estimated one million plant and animal species at risk of extinction.

To sever these financial lifelines, Safaricom—alongside its parent companies Vodafone and Vodacom—will deploy AI within its anti-money laundering (AML) and transaction monitoring systems. The AI will be integrated across M-Pesa, Africa’s leading mobile money platform, to flag and disrupt suspicious transactions linked to poaching and trafficking syndicates.

Concurrently, mainstream payment processors and major cryptocurrency analytics firms—including Paypal, Chainalysis, TRM Labs, and Luno—have pledged to use blockchain tracking and advanced digital forensics to hunt down and expose cross-border crypto wallets and alternative payment pathways used by wildlife smugglers.

The urgent need for digital and financial intervention is underscored by the historic devastation of Africa’s iconic megafauna, most notably the white rhinoceros. The species serves as a stark warning of how rapidly unregulated, criminal markets can push an animal to the absolute brink of extinction.

While intensive, century-long conservation efforts successfully revived the Southern White Rhino population to around 17,000, a resurgence in organized poaching over the last two decades has threatened to undo those gains. Rhino horn, which is composed of keratin (the same protein found in human hair and fingernails), has been sold on the black market for up to $60,000 per kilogram—making it more valuable by weight than gold or cocaine.

This immense profit margin shifted poaching from localized hunting to highly organized, transnational crime syndicates. By cutting off the modern payment infrastructure used by these syndicates, the new coalition aims to ensure other vulnerable species do not suffer the same fate.

A Unified Front

The private sector’s massive, coordinated pivot marks a turning point in environmental corporate responsibility, moving past standard non-profit donations toward deploying core tech architecture against criminal networks.

“What we see from the private sector today is a recognition that the illegal wildlife trade is both an environmental and a business issue,” said David Fein, co-chair of United for Wildlife.

Supporting the digital crackdown on the ground and in the skies, aviation leaders British Airways and Heathrow Airport also announced they will launch expansive public awareness campaigns to help travelers identify and report suspected wildlife products, tightening the net on smugglers globally.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, California (KOLO) – A former South Lake Tahoe man has been found guilty in a series of scams involving cryptocurrency.

The Department of Justice says 53-year-old Daniel Chartraw also used sham business ventures and false investment guarantees causing substantial financial losses to numerous victims nationwide.

The DOJ says that, between March 2021 and February 2022, Chartraw and an associate controlled multiple companies. They say that he and several other individuals acting on his behalf represented that one of his companies was a web-based cryptocurrency trading company that guaranteed high returns with no risk.

At various points, he also claimed his other company, TDA Global, was engaged in supplying jet fuel to airlines or operated its own cryptocurrency trading platform.

“This verdict sends a clear message: individuals who exploit the trust of others and steal through deception will be held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Grant. “The defendant lied to investors and caused serious financial and emotional harm. Our office will continue to pursue those who use emerging technologies, including cryptocurrency, as vehicles for fraud.”

Chartraw communicated with potential and existing investors through phone calls, texts, emails and virtual meetings using Teams and Zoom. The DOJ says that, although he was directing operations, he frequently used aliases and told associates he needed to conceal his identity due to a prior fraud conviction.

The DOJ says he repeatedly accessed his company’s bank account despite not being a signatory, and used it to withdraw cash, make purchases, and transfer investor funds to accounts he controlled.

Authorities say he also used fabricated account statements, false assurances of growth, and repeated misrepresentations to persuade victims to invest additional funds. When investors attempted to recover their money or questioned delays, Chartraw provided excuses, deflected responsibility or stopped communication altogether.

The total loss to investors was nearly $1 million.

Chartraw will be sentenced in September and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each count

Developers in the Crosshairs

Lummis made her case via a statement shared on June 22, singling out the legal exposure faced by the people who write code for decentralized finance ( DeFi) tools, wallets and other onchain services. She has repeatedly argued that the absence of clear rules leaves engineers guessing whether routine work could later be treated as a crime, a fear that has lingered over the industry since a wave of enforcement actions in prior years. She added:

“Software developers should not need an army of lawyers to know if their code is legal. The Clarity Act ends that absurdity.”

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, known as the CLARITY Act, would split oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set out when a token should be treated as a security or a commodity.

It also carries language to shield developers and infrastructure providers who never take custody of customer funds from being classified as money transmitters, a designation that carries heavy licensing and surveillance obligations.

A Bill Months in the Making

The legislation has been advancing in stages, with the House passing its version in July 2025 by a 294-134 margin, and on May 14, 2026, the Senate Banking Committee advanced an amended bill in a bipartisan 15-9 vote. The measure has since been placed on the Senate calendar, making it formally eligible for floor consideration.

Not everyone is convinced, though, and Senator Elizabeth Warren has routinely opposed the bill during the committee markup, offering 44 amendments, none of which passed, and warning that the framework could blow up the economy. Lummis, by contrast, has cast the stakes in national terms, cautioning that inaction could cede digital-asset leadership to China and Europe.

The senator has also put a clock on it, warning that missing the current window could push comprehensive crypto legislation to 2030. She has said customers may lack guaranteed rights to their holdings if a digital-asset exchange goes bankrupt, leaving them stuck in creditor proceedings rather than recovering their assets directly.

Industry and National Security Support

Outside Congress, the bill has drawn an unusually broad coalition. A group of 160 national security, intelligence and law enforcement veterans signed a letter to Senate leaders backing the measure, while more than 1,200 tech companies pressed the Senate to pass it quickly. Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse has thrown the company’s weight behind the bill, saying “this is the moment” for U.S. crypto rules.

Supporters argue that regulatory certainty would keep developers and startups onshore rather than pushing them toward jurisdictions with clearer frameworks, such as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regime. Without it, they say, the U.S. risks exporting its most promising builders along with the jobs and tax revenue they generate.

The next hurdle is a full Senate vote, where the bill must clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold before any reconciliation with the House version and a signature from President Donald Trump. With the legislative calendar tightening, Lummis and her allies are betting that the prospect of renewed prosecutions and the risk of falling behind global rivals will be enough to move undecided senators. For developers watching from the sidelines, the outcome will determine whether writing code remains a legal gray area or finally gets a clear rulebook.

1,200 Tech Companies Push Senate to Pass CLARITY Act Quickly as US Crypto Rules Face Global Pressure

The Consumer Technology Association, which represents more than 1,200 technology companies, urged Senate leaders to advance the CLARITY Act as…

Read Now

1,200 Tech Companies Push Senate to Pass CLARITY Act Quickly as US Crypto Rules Face Global Pressure

The Consumer Technology Association, which represents more than 1,200 technology companies, urged Senate leaders to advance the CLARITY Act as…

Read Now

1,200 Tech Companies Push Senate to Pass CLARITY Act Quickly as US Crypto Rules Face Global Pressure

Read Now

The Consumer Technology Association, which represents more than 1,200 technology companies, urged Senate leaders to advance the CLARITY Act as…