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South African National Parks (SANParks) welcomes the sentencing of poaching syndicate leader and kingpin, Simon Ernesto Valoi who goes by the name of “Navara” to a 27-year imprisonment by a Mozambican court. His accomplice Paulo Zukula also received a hefty 24-year jail sentence.
The kingpin comes from Massingir, a district about 330km north of Maputo on the border adjacent to the Kruger National Park (KNP) and is one of the rhino-poaching bosses, known for targeting the park. The conviction is of multiple crimes. The court found Valoi and Zukula guilty of crimes relating to financing terrorism, poaching, the sale of protected species, money laundering, the use of banned weapons, the use of forged documents, the sale and purchase of illegal guns and vehicles and criminal conspiracy.
For a long time, his wealth and popularity as a recruiter of young men from his home that he would send across the border to hunt rhinos shielded him from prosecution until he was finally arrested in July 2022. Valoi and Zukula were apprehended by the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) officers in Maputo after a coordinated intelligence operation with the Wildlife Justice Commission; whose mission is to disrupt and help dismantle organised crime networks trafficking in wildlife, timber and fish. During their arrest, authorities seized rhino horns.
Several of Valoi’s relatives are also reported to have been detained on the grounds that they assisted the organised crime network.