Kenya’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) charged a Chinese national and a Kenyan man on March 17 with dealing in live wildlife species without a permit, after Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) agents intercepted more than 2,200 live garden ants at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi.
Zhang Kequn, 37, was detained at JKIA on March 10 after immigration authorities had placed a stop order on his passport. Prosecutors told the court that 1,948 ants were found packed in specialized test tubes inside his luggage. “A further 300 live ants were recovered concealed in three rolls of tissue paper,” prosecutor Allen Mulama told the court.
A second suspect, Charles Mwangi, 35, was arraigned on March 16 after police searched his home and recovered 1,000 unpackaged live garden ants, 113 ants in modified syringes, and 503 empty syringes.
𝐃𝐏𝐏 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐚 𝟑𝟕-𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫-𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has charged a Chinese national and a Kenyan man for dealing in live wildlife species,… pic.twitter.com/B0m6MmSRIb
— Office of The Director Of Public Prosecutions (@ODPP_KE) March 17, 2026
The ODPP linked Mwangi to an ant shipment seized in Bangkok on March 10 that had originated from the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, and said he had ties to accomplices across several Kenyan counties. Both men pleaded not guilty before Senior Principal Magistrate Irene Gichobi and were remanded pending a March 27 hearing.
Court documents identified Zhang as the alleged ringleader of a trafficking network broken up in Kenya in 2025, and stated he had left the country at the time using a different passport.
Duncan Juma, a senior KWS official, told the BBC that more arrests were expected as investigators expanded their probe into other Kenyan towns where ant harvesting was suspected.
The ants are Messor cephalotes, the giant African harvester ant, the world’s largest species in its genus and native to East Africa. KWS has said the species is ecologically critical, and that its removal from the wild disrupts soil health and biodiversity.
Queen ants fetch roughly $233 each on European and Asian exotic pet markets, KWS has stated.
In May 2025, a Nairobi court fined two Belgian nationals, a Vietnamese national, and a Kenyan $7,700 each after they pleaded guilty to attempting to traffic 5,440 of the same species out of the country. KWS called it “a landmark case” and said the prosecution signaled a shift in wildlife trafficking from iconic species toward lesser-known fauna.
