Watch – How five ancient baobabs nearly left South Africa for a billionaire’s park

Five mature baobabs were dug up in Limpopo without permits, trucked 800km to Durban and left on their sides in a logistics car park for three months. Their destination: allegedly, Georgia, on the Black Sea.

Environmental journalist Tony Carnie got an anonymous tip-off, photographed the trees through a fence and followed the trail to a private botanical park owned by former Georgian prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had already taken eight baobabs from Kenya.

On Beyond the Lead, Tamsin Metelerkamp and Lerato Mutsila ask Tony how the trees slipped past the authorities, who is responsible now that criminal charges have been laid, and why plant smuggling is a $21bn-a-year crime that rarely makes the news.

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Hosted by: Lerato Mutsila and Tamsin Metelerkamp
Guest: Tony Carnie
Edited by: Joel Seboa
Produced by: Emilie Gambade & Joel Seboa
Original Theme Music & Design by: Bernard Kotze

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This episode of Beyond the Lead is brought to you by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, an organisation dedicated to strengthening democracy and human rights across the world, and creating new momentum for liberalism. DM