Government officials in Malawi have applied to withdraw bribery charges against wildlife trafficking convict Lin Yunhua, which would pave the way for his release from prison.
In July 2025, a presidential pardon set Lin, a Chinese national, free from a 14-year jail sentence he’d received in 2021 connected to illegally trading in wildlife parts such as ivory, rhino horn and pangolin scales. Malawian authorities had arrested Lin, his wife and 13 members of his transnational wildlife crime syndicate in 2019.
While pardoned, Lin remained in prison on charges of bribing a prison official and a judge to influence his sentencing; offenses he allegedly committed while on trial for the wildlife crimes.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Fostino Maele, has now instructed the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), which brought the bribery charges against Lin, to drop those charges. Maele was previously Lin’s lawyer. Environmental and anti-corruption activists demanded that he recuse himself from the case due to a conflict of interest. But Maele did not.
At the time of publishing, Maele had not responded to questions from Mongabay about reasons for dropping the bribery charges and concerns of conflict of interest.
“We have a serious contradiction here,” environmentalist Charles Mkoka told Mongabay in a phone interview. “We sit in one room and plan what to do to send a strong message to wildlife traffickers that we will not tolerate their crimes. In another room, some offices are scrapping off cases of those that are engaging in wildlife trafficking. This is regrettable.”
The hearing on the corruption case started on May 13, and two prison officials had testified as state witnesses. The anti-corruption body’s chief legal and prosecution officer, Peter Sambani, said the DPP, in a letter on May 19, directed the ACB to withdraw the case. The ACB then applied for the case’s discontinuation at the High Court in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, on June 9.
According to the Malawi Constitution, while the DPP has sole power over discontinuance of a case, he is required to provide reasons to the Parliament within 10 days.
In an online petition, environmental and anti-corruption civil society organisations say discontinuing the case against Lin would lead to questions about Malawi’s commitment to combating corruption and organized wildlife crime.
Mkoka, who is also the executive director of the Coordination Union for Rehabilitation of the Environment (CURE) in Malawi, told Mongabay that the presidential pardon last year set a tone for the collapse of the bribery case as it undermined the work of law enforcement agencies that had arrested and prosecuted Lin.
“Probably, we did not speak out hard enough against that pardon,” he said. “Now, we need to have a serious reflection [on] whether we still need laws that empower certain offices to set free high-profile wildlife offenders and whether those offices are using their powers responsibly.”
Banner image: Lin Yunhua in a court appearance in May 2026 answering bribery charges. Image courtesy of Lloyd M’bwana.
