108: Earth League International: Saving the Planet | Andrea Crosta

Andrea Crosta is the Founder and Executive Director of Earth League International (ELI). Earth League International was created 12 years ago as an NGO and became the first Intelligence Agency for the Earth, triggered by Andrea’s experience of working in security in Kenya and being exposed to the scale of the elephant poaching crisis. His story is an intense human centred and purposeful example of one person becoming a force for good. 

Andrea soon realised that investigating poaching and ivory trafficking at a local level would lead him to links with international terrorist funding and organised crime syndicates. Andrea saw the convergence of environmental crime with more serious crime across geographic boundaries and realised he needed to build the capability of ELI to be able to investigate complex networks, so he recruited former FBI, CIA and undercover operative to be able to continue this work. 

Through Andrea’s leadership and passion, he began advocating for global law enforcement agencies and governments to understand the criminal convergence of these two worlds. 

He recruited people who believed passionately about the purpose of ELI where the meaning was their money. 

Andrea tells the story of their first ever investigation into Jaguar parts trafficking, especially fangs and bones for the illegal black market as fake tiger parts. Very soon that investigation led to the criminal networks involved at a global scale and a trade worth millions of dollars.

The work of ELI in creating Confidential Intelligence Briefs for major law enforcement agencies has changed the nature of environmental crime investigations and prosecutions in pursuit of their purpose of becoming Earths’ first intelligence agency to protect our planet. Hope is not part of Andrea’s vocabulary as his work is non-negotiable. 

You can see more about the work of Earth League International in two documentaries on Netflix and National geographic. ‘Sea of Shadows’ and ‘The Ivory Game’ 

www.earthleagueinternational.org

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