Kenyan court charges two men including Chinese citizen with smuggling live ants

Kenyan wildlife officers sort live queen garden ants being exhibited in court as Zhang Kequn, a Chinese national and Charles Mwangi, a Kenyan citizen, face charges for smuggling them through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)

NAIROBI - A court in Kenya on Tuesday charged two men with transporting wildlife illegally after one of them, a Chinese national, was arrested at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with more than 2,000 live ants last week.

Zhang Kequn, 27, was detained last Tuesday while attempting to leave the country, court documents showed. Kenyan immigration officials had flagged his passport with a “stop order” after he evaded arrest in the country last year.

Prosecutors arraigned a second person, Charles Mwangi, on Monday, accusing him of supplying live ants to foreign traffickers. Authorities linked Mwangi to a shipment of ants seized in Bangkok on March 10, which originated from the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.

Zhang and Mwangi pleaded not guilty to the charges before Senior Principal Magistrate Irene Gichobi, including dealing with wildlife species without a permit. The court ordered both men to be remanded in custody, pending further directions in the case on March 27.

Ant enthusiasts pay large sums to maintain colonies in large transparent vessels known as formicariums, which offer a literal window into the species’ complex social structures and behaviors.

Four men were fined US$7,700 each last year for trying to traffic thousands of ants valuable to Kenya’s ecosystem, in a case that experts said showed a move in biopiracy from trophies like elephant ivory to lesser-known species.

Reporting by Humphrey Malalo and Vincent Mumo Nzilani; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Pooja Desai