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He is the founder of a globetrotting hunt club for millionaires and billionaires who like to photograph rare and exotic animals in far-off lands. Robert Kern, president of the Hunting Consortium, captured exotic animals from a helicopter in the Russian Far East and saw a consultant in his group become trapped in the global outrage caused by the endangered rhino hunt. Court documents show that federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into Kern and his group following an unfortunate hunting trip to Iran.
An application for a search warrant filed by prosecutors in Virginia shows that the Department of Justice sought to establish whether the large game hunter and his group had committed wire and insurance fraud as part of their hunting planned in 2011 in Iran. According to court documents obtained by the Daily Beast, the government said that the founder of a globe-trotting hunting club could have committed a fraud while it would have helped his wealthy clients to obtain fraudulent refunds after that Iran had canceled their rare sheep hunting project in the Islamic Republic.
Kern did not respond to requests for comment when he was contacted by The Daily Beast. The US prosecutor's office, citing the Justice Department's policy, refused to confirm or deny the existence of an ongoing investigation.
Western tourists seeking to hunt big game rare would be a lucrative business in Iran. A big game hunting service announced prices of up to $ 28,000 per sheep.
In addition to the allegation of fraud, federal investigators also examined possible violations of the law on corrupt practices abroad by Kern. A footnote buried in the back of the search warrant indicates that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has found a document called "bribe" with regard to government officials from other countries. The court documents indicated that the forces of the order were looking for "commercial documents … concerning trips for which a bribe was paid to facilitate hunting trips".
The footnote referred to a "previous investigation" of a trip by the hunting consortium to Russia, apparently referring to Kern's first contact with the federal security forces.
In 2007, Texas federal prosecutors accused Kern, a former combat helicopter pilot who had served in Vietnam, of violating the Lacey law, which prohibits the importation of violently acquired hunting trophies. US or foreign laws. South Texas district attorneys have asserted that an investigation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, dubbed "Operation Fire and Ice," had shown that Kern and the hunting consortium had hunted moose and the Bighorn sheep in a helicopter during a hunting trip in 2002 in Russia.
Helicopter hunting is illegal in Russia, but at the trial, Kern said he believed hunters were eligible for an exception under the law because they had donated meat from these animals at a local children's school. A jury accepted and acquitted Kern and the Hunting Consortium of all charges.
Kern is not the only member of the hunting consortium to have been the subject of hunting controversy. In 2014, Corey Knowlton, a consortium member, announced that he had won a $ 350,000 bid from the Texas-based Safari Club, which had participated in the Kamchatka hunt in 2002, for the chance to to kill an African black rhino in danger in Namibia. The auction sparked a strong response from environmental groups and the public, and Mr. Knowlton announced that he needed to engage private security services 24 hours a day because of the death threats that threatened him. According to court records, during the search of Kern's home in August 2018, investigators seized documents related to a hunting trip to Knowlton in 2011. Knowlton hunted and killed the rhinoceros on a documented trip by CNN in 2018.
The Hunting Consortium addresses an exclusive clientele of affluent outdoor enthusiasts. The late Texas oil billionaire Dan Duncan participated in the 2002 hunt in Russia. And in an article published on the organization's website, Abdorreza Pahlavi – the late brother of Shah Mohammed Rez Pahlavi, ousted from Iran, and a fervent hunter himself – said: "I was part of best hunts of my life with the Hunting Consortium! "
The unsealed search warrant application in 2018 alleged that Kern had helped participants apply for allegedly fraudulent traveler insurance refunds when Iran had reduced its hunting permits. According to an affidavit, the FBI believed that Kern knew in October 2011 that Iran would soon begin to restrict licenses and put in place a program allowing participants in the planned hunt who had not taken out insurance beforehand to have their trip reimbursed.
The affidavit quotes an unidentified cooperating witness who allegedly told the federal police that Kern "prepared false letters, with different dates, allegedly from Iran Safari," informing clients that the exit had been canceled.
These letters would have been designed to allow members of the Kern Hunting Consortium to re-book their trips with the traveler's insurance and claim the refund when their license was no longer issued. The informant, who runs his own hunting business, said the letters were suspicious because Iran Safari, a local Iranian company that helps organize hunting trips, has never interacted with customers, but only through the intermediary of his society.
The informant also expressed his suspicions to the insurer of the hunting consortium, AIG, who then "started to refuse some of the claims presented by hunters for hunting trips to Iran" reserved by the Kern group . Prosecutors say AIG investigators have "identified eleven suspicious travel insurance claims" related to the 2011 trip.
The court documents indicate that there is no evidence that other hunters who hired Kern were informed of the alleged fraud.
The search warrant was executed in August 2018. Prosecutors have not charged Kern with a crime related to the allegations and it is unclear whether the investigation continues. Federal agents have seized more than 30 binders related to hunting trips from 2011 to 2017, as well as nearly a dozen electronic devices, including hard drives and computers.
Court documents show that some members of the 2011 trip eventually traveled to Iran, but the few sheep remained out of their sight.
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