Finally, a book that reveals the inner workings of a murky underworld market we know alarmingly little about… a fascinating first-hand account from an insider.
— Mandy Wiener
The Money Show’s Bruce Whitfield interviewed Kimon de Greef for his weekly business book review.
De Greef is a poaching researcher and author of “Poacher: Confessions from the Abalone Underworld”.
The description on Amazon:
Locked up for poaching abalone, Shuhood Abader began writing his life story.
For over fifteen years, he had been a small cog in a criminal industry stretching from the Cape underworld to China’s luxury seafood market.
As abalone – “perlemoen”, “perly” – vanishes from the South African coast, Shuhood’s first-person account takes us right into the heart of the crisis.
Kimon de Greef’s postgrad research on poaching led him into journalism, and today he is the pre-eminent local expert on the illicit abalone trade.
He contextualises Abader’s raw, immediate tale by showing how the system works: from desperate fishing communities via gang strongholds on the Cape Flats, tik, guns and police complicity to the harbours of Morocco and Hong Kong.
Journey with the authors through death-defying dives, blackmail, robbery, shark encounters, near-drownings, and chases by the police and rivals.
“Poacher” tells the story of a deadly black market; but it is also the story of one man, deeply conflicted, committed to his faith and searching for a better way.
Listen to the interview in the audio below.
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