Fred Ellis

I am a wildlife trade analyst and financial specialist working for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. Operating between London and Cambridge in the UK, I work on monitoring the timber trade between the Congo Basin and southeast Asia, and providing financial crime awareness training for various stakeholders across the regions. Previously, I worked as a financial intelligence analyst and financial investigator for the City of London Police, before moving to the Republic of Congo to provide intelligence analysis capabilities and training to combat illegal wildlife poaching and trafficking.

I recently worked on making TimberStats - a timber trade monitoring and discrepancy tool - available to law enforcement, governments, the financial sector, academia and the general public. TimberStats allows for the analysis and visualisation of UN Comtrade records, and highlights where one country's exports of timber may not align with a corresponding country's recorded imports. These discrepancies can be indications of potential smuggling, document fraud, corruption and trade-based money laundering. By providing simple comparative analysis, TimberStats opens the door to starting investigations by law enforcement, governments and the financial sector to combat the illegal timber trade.