It’s an unlikely spot for a zoo – down an unmade, dusty road, amid a wood to the east of the German capital Berlin.

But here in the village of Tasdorf, hundreds of the world’s most endangered and rare parrot species are said to be housed at the headquarters of the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots (ACTP).

The site is not easily accessible by public transport, and there is no car park. No signs offer information about opening hours or admission prices. The main entrance is through a roller-door. Next to its main building, on an adjacent house, a small sign gives a mobile number to call if no one is home.

From these obscure premises, a former nightclub manager and unofficial debt collector, Martin Guth, has been able to acquire one of the largest private collections of threatened birds in the world. The collection includes imperial and red-necked parrots from the Caribbean island of Dominica, endangered Australian cockatoos and about 90% of the global population of Brazil’s Spix’s macaw, a species that is now extinct in the wild.

Guth’s organisation, ACTP, has gained the cooperation of governments in several countries, including Australia, which has granted permits for the export of more than 200 native parrots since 2015, on condition that they were for exhibition only.

An Australian MP, Warren Entsch, says he warned his own government about its relationship with ACTP.

“I raised concerns with the [environment] minister’s office, with his staff, that we had a situation that birds seemed to be being freely sent to this German facility that was not a zoo, it’s not freely open to the public,” he says.

“It seemed to be a private collection. That bothered me.

“Every way you look at ACTP, it doesn’t tick any of the boxes, it is not a legitimate zoo.

“It is a closed operation.”

ACTP promotes itself as a protector of endangered parrots. But a six-month Guardian investigation has revealed that:

Australia allowed the export of rare species despite concerns that the birds could be sold to wealthy collectors

The German federal conservation agency is aware of private social media messages that show Australian birds apparently imported by ACTP have been offered for sale for hundreds of thousands of dollars

Guth served a five-year prison term for kidnapping and extortion, and a second 20-month term for extortion in 2009

German authorities have vouched for ACTP, but say they have no knowledge of Guth’s criminal background

ACTP is licensed to operate as a zoo but has no facilities freely open to the public

At least one individual who works with ACTP has a conviction for involvement with illegal bird trading

Governments and regulatory bodies have ignored numerous concerns about ACTP raised by scientists, conservationists, breeders and politicians.

Martin Guth did not respond to a series of questions about ACTP put to him by the Guardian. But in an unsolicited earlier message he said the organisation was “extremely careful to follow all the rules and regulations set by both our German authorities and those of the other countries whom we deal with”.

He accused the Guardian of harassing ACTP associates and fabricating stories about the organisation.

Behind closed doors

Since its establishment in 2006, ACTP has positioned itself as an organisation dedicated “to the protection and conservation of endangered parrots and their habitats”.

Its primary activity appears to be breeding captive parrots in Germany as “safety populations” in the event of a sharp decline in a species in the wild.

This approach has put it at odds with scientists and bird experts who advocate conservation measures that keep species in their native habitats. The Guardian does not allege birds have been kept in unsatisfactory conditions, or that the welfare of individual birds has been compromised.

The Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots buildings in Tasdorf, outside Berlin. Photograph: The Guardian

In a little over a decade, ACTP has reached agreements with the governments of Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Dominica, Brazil and Australia to import parrots. It has done so with the approval of Germany’s Bundesamt für Naturschutz – the federal agency for nature conservation (BfN).

The legal import and export of rare and endangered birds is governed by the 1975 convention on international trade in endangered species (Cites). But ACTP operates in a grey area where national authorities take responsibility for limited areas of activity in their own country. The Guardian’s investigation has found instances where neither the exporting nor the importing country has effectively supervised both ends of a transfer.

ACTP has also acquired birds from private organisations in other countries. They include the Al Wabra wildlife preservation centre in Qatar, established by Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed al-Thani, a Qatari royal family member.

Al-Thani died in 2014 and ACTP has since said it has imported Al Wabra’s entire stock of Spix’s macaws, a Brazilian species extinct in the wild. In a Facebook post in September, the organisation said it had 142 of the total global captive population of 159 Spix’s macaws and planned to breed them for release back into the wild in Brazil.

But the precise nature of ACTP’s activities is opaque. The organisation publishes no information on its website about its board or governance, no annual financial reports detailing donors or other funding, and no scientific peer-reviewed research about its conservation work. Even establishing the addresses where it operates is challenging.

In paperwork submitted to the Australian environment department in August 2017, obtained under freedom of information laws, ACTP said it had multiple facilities in Germany.

ACTP says it has almost all the remaining Spix’s macaws in the world.

Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

These include the breeding facility in Tasdorf, a quarantine centre in nearby Schöneiche, a “winter facility” at Weeze on the Dutch border, and two clinics for veterinary care – one in Achern in the south-west of the country and one at the University of Giessen.

It said it also had facilities in the US, South Africa, Israel, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Its Danish facility is operated by a bird breeder who, according to association documents lodged in Germany, is the only other director of ACTP alongside Guth.

ACTP’s breeding centre at Wisbroek, in the Netherlands, is operated by a Dutch bird collector who was convicted in 2015 for his involvement as a buyer in an animal trading ring that was illegally selling exotic birds and mammals.

‘An insidious global trade’

Parrots may not seem an obvious international commodity. But there is big money at play in the shadowy world between legitimate conservation efforts and outright criminality.

All birds are legal, also with documentation, everything clean! Private social media message offering cockatoos for sale

Ben Parker is a commercial investigator who has worked for Australia’s federal environment department and for customs. He spent many years investigating the international parrot trade and tracking smugglers.

“The international parrot trade is a huge industry,” he says. “It reaps amazing financial returns for those who supply these birds to global collectors.

“It is a multimillion-dollar industry that inspires an insidious global trade and a black market.”

Transactions are regularly conducted on private forums and even common species in one country can sell at high prices in foreign markets.

There is no suggestion ACTP has engaged in smuggling birds, or has acquired them unlawfully.

But parrots that appear to have been imported by ACTP have been offered for sale through private social media messages, seen by the Guardian.

The glossy black cockatoo. Photograph: Auscape/UIG via Getty Images

One message from a German bird breeder offers “Glossys” – Australian glossy black cockatoos – for sale at €95,000 a pair, or €180,000 for two pairs.

“All birds are legal, also with documentation, everything clean!!”, the message says, before asking the potential buyer for their discretion.

The messages are signed off with the postcode of the Brandenburg town of Schöneiche, where Guth and one of ACTP’s facilities are based.

The BfN confirmed to the Guardian it was aware that glossy black cockatoos imported from Australia by ACTP had been offered for sale. It said it had looked into the sales offers and found the birds had been legally imported and bred, and there were no limits on trade.

But under the terms of ACTP’s Australian permits, the birds and their offspring could only be moved to recognised zoos.

A second private message, sent by a man on the German border with the Netherlands who identifies himself as a member of ACTP, offers mutation Australian purple-crowned lorikeets for sale. Birds that carry rare colour mutations are not typically shown in zoos but their unique features and genes mean they sell for large sums among collectors.

The sales pitch this time does not come with a price tag. The vendor simply claims the birds are the offspring of Australian lorikeets held by ACTP and extends an invitation to view them.

In October 2017 an announcement was placed in the Danish aviculture magazine Dansk Fuglehold stating that a co-director of ACTP with Martin Guth, had registered to be recognised as the first person to successfully breed purple-crowned lorikeets in Denmark.

ACTP imported 26 purple-crowned lorikeets from Australia in 2017. Those birds could not legally be transferred to Denmark under the terms of the Australian permit, unless the facility they were sent to was registered as a zoo. The director’s name does not appear on lists of zoos registered in Denmark. Only four other purple-crowned lorikeets have ever been legally exported from Australia under Cites – four individuals, also on a zoo permit, to Spain in 2017.

Requests to the director for comment were redirected to Guth and ACTP’s press office. Neither responded to questions.

A purple-crowned lorikeet. Photograph: FLPA/Alamy Stock Photo

Australia’s strict wildlife trade laws mean its native species are rarely exported. In addition to Cites restrictions, under Australian law no native species can be exported for commercial purposes.

No glossy black cockatoos had been legally exported under Cites until 2015, when ACTP received seven individuals, and then a further nine in 2016. It did so on the strict condition that the birds were to be used for exhibition only. It could not legally sell any of the birds or their offspring.

Only one other legal export of glossy black cockatoos from Australia is registered in the Cites trade database: seven individuals that went to Cyprus in 2017.

Permits issued to ACTP state the purpose of the imports is for exhibition, but ACTP’s own correspondence with the Australian government department states it is not open to the general public and is not registered with any international zoological association. Official records show ACTP obtained a licence to operate a zoo in Germany only months before it applied to import parrots from Australia.

ACTP told the Australian government that tours of its Brandenburg facility were available by private appointment only and it had about 1,200 visitors a year. It did not respond to a request for more detailed visitor records, or information on how the public could arrange a visit.

The local authority that issued the zoo licence, the Landkreis Märkisch-Oderland, said the public could view ACTP’s birds if visitors were “accompanied”.

Who is Martin Guth?

None of the sources contacted by the Guardian have doubted Guth’s genuine and longstanding interest in birds. One businessman from the Caribbean island of Dominica, who visited ACTP’s facilities in Germany, said: “The whole place is birds, even his house is smelling of birds.”

But Guth’s love of birds has coexisted with a much darker past.

He grew up in the former East Germany. In 1989, the year of his 19th birthday and the year the Berlin Wall fell, he left for the west, where he worked in a pet shop for a year.

By the early 1990s he was involved in serious criminal activities. On 23 September 1996, Guth, then 26, was sentenced to five years in prison by the Potsdam regional court. The convictions: hostage taking, attempted fraud and extortion.

The court judgment is detailed. In one incident in 1992, Guth had been running a nightclub in the town of Nauen, outside Berlin, when a man who delivered drinks to his bar said he had been defrauded by a drinks supplier.

Guth offered his services as a private debt collector and, with five to seven associates, travelled to Marquardt near Potsdam, where they confronted the beverage trader and another man at a pub.

They picked the men up by their arms, dragged them into the carpark and demanded they pay 25,000 deutschmarks. When the men refused, they bundled them into separate cars and drove them to Guth’s office in Nauen, threatening to cut off their fingers “one by one at hourly intervals” if the money wasn’t paid.

The judgment outlines further cases in which Guth acted as a private debt collector, despite having no licence to do so, and used threats of abduction and violence in an attempt to extort large sums of cash from people, including a married couple and their daughter.

The same document says Guth had left school in year 10 to start an apprenticeship as an animal carer, but did not complete his training.

In 2009 Guth was back in court, this time on seven counts of extortion committed while on day release from prison in 1998 and 1999. He was convicted and sentenced to 20 months in jail.

The 2009 judgment notes that by this point Guth had made progress with his career aspirations. “The accused lives with his wife … in a private house with an attached aviary,” it says. “His main occupation is as director of an organisation for endangered parrots.”

Guth is now nearly 50. Before he deleted his Facebook page in November, it included a photo in which he compared his appearance to Felonius Gru, the former supervillain who is the main character in the animated movie Despicable Me.

The Australia deal

It was an extraordinary number of birds. Australia, renowned for strict wildlife laws that make it difficult to trade native species, authorised the export of 232 parrots in five consignments to a single organisation, ACTP, between 2015 and 2018.

The birds – bought openly from breeders and traders – included endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoos, vulnerable Baudin’s black cockatoos, naretha bluebonnets, gang-gang cockatoos and mutation varieties of king parrots and galahs.

Documents obtained by the Guardian show no evidence the Australian authorities conducted any background checks on Guth or his colleagues that might have uncovered the existence of his criminal record before they approved the transfers. Nor were they alerted to it by their German counterparts.

Emails show officials in the BfN vouched for ACTP when officials in Australia asked about the organisation’s activities. Australia accepted the statements put to them by ACTP and the German authorities without conducting further checks.

In ACTP’s initial application to the environment department to be recognised as a zoo, it was asked: “If the zoo is privately owned, has the owner ever been convicted of a criminal offence or declared bankrupt?” ACTP, which is registered as an association in Germany, responded that it was not privately owned. Its response in relation to criminal offences was marked “n/a”.

It seemed to be a private collection. That bothered me Warren Entsch

The BfN, which oversees the import of wildlife into Germany, told the Guardian it was unaware of Guth’s criminal convictions and said its oversight covered only activities related to wildlife.

But others did try to warn the Australian government. Multiple emails and documents, obtained under freedom of information laws, reveal that the Australian department and the former environment minister Josh Frydenberg were warned by the aviculture industry and the MP Warren Entsch that the purpose of the imports was not zoo exhibition, but trade.

Entsch, an MP in Australia’s Liberal National Coalition government, is also a bird lover who keeps macaws on his property in Queensland.

The former Australian environment minister – now treasurer – Josh Frydenberg. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Entsch says he warned the department, Frydenberg personally and the office of the former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull of his concerns about ACTP in numerous meetings.

“For exhibition purposes, they were taking a very large number of birds,” Entsch says. “The same number of yellow-tailed black cockatoos you’d find in all the Australian zoos combined.

“They are sourcing large numbers of mutations, which is an absolute no-no from a zoo’s perspective.

“Some of the species they are taking are not even endangered. There’s no justification for them to take them over there. There’s no suggestion they’re breeding them for insurance populations and even if they were, why wouldn’t you do that [in Australia]?

“For all of those reasons they raise a whole lot of alarm bells.

“I think there needs to be a full investigation as to the reasons why, in spite of warnings going back over 12 months, not only from me but from others within the industry, that concerns have been ignored.”

Frydenberg did not respond to requests for comment.

They were not the only warnings. On 23 October 2017 officials in Australia and Germany received an email from the Cites secretariat in Switzerland stating that an unknown informant had contacted the secretariat warning that Guth was in Australia intending to trap naretha bluebonnet parrots in the Nullarbor desert.

“Information suggest (sic) that a consignment of birds might be exported to Germany, allegedly for exhibition but in reality to be sold to wealthy European collectors,” it said.

Franz Böhmer of the BfN replied reassuringly, saying the agency knew ACTP well. “Just last week some of my colleagues have checked the premisses [sic] and the parrot enclosures of Mr Guth. The housing conditions are very fine and Mr Guth is trying to fulfil all legal requirements on a high level,” he said.

“To our knowledge Mr Guth is currently on the way to some Arabian countries but not on the way to Australia. Nevertheless we will have a close look to the applications handed in by Mr Guth.”

The entrance to ACTP’s premises in Tasdorf. Photograph: The Guardian

A senior Australian official replied on 24 October to say officials were meeting Guth the following day.

Paul Murphy, the head of the department’s wildlife trade and biosecurity branch, met Frydenberg’s staff on 27 October and told them he planned to issue a permit for 74 birds.

“There is no policy to limit the quantity of birds, I had met with the applicants, although an unusual zoo, the proposal seems legitimate,” he wrote in a case note. “I explained that the application met the legislative requirements to be issued a permit.”

In response to questions from the Guardian, a spokeswoman for the environment department said it was only required to examine the backgrounds of exporters applying for export permits, not importers.

“The Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots (ACTP) was the importer,” she said.

She said allegations about ACTP’s activities had been raised, but “to date, the department has not been provided evidence to confirm these allegations”.

BfN officials had inspected ACTP’s facilities in October 2017 in response to the allegations raised by the Cites secretariat, she said. “German officials did not detect any indicators of illegal avian trading or possession, and noted that ACTP operators had fulfilled their legal requirements to a high standard.”

In December 2017, the Australian government brokered a deal with ACTP that involved the organisation giving $200,000 to the Western Australian government for projects to protect the critically endangered western ground parrot.

After being contacted by the Guardian, the office of the threatened species commissioner, Sally Box, said no such deal would have been reached had it known of Guth’s record.

“The commissioner, nor any other officer in the Department of the Environment and Energy, would not seek to broker a conservation partnership with a known criminal,” a spokesperson said.

An imperial Amazon, pictured in an ACTP aviary in Germany. Photograph: DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy Stock Photo

After the hurricane

Australia is not the only country to have sent its native birds to ACTP.

On 17 March 2018, a private charter plane left the Caribbean island of Dominica bound for Germany, via Saint Lucia.

On board were representatives of ACTP, with two imperial and 10 red-necked parrots that had been housed at a conservation facility after surviving Hurricane Maria, which had ripped through the country six months earlier.

The 12 birds were moved to ACTP’s facilities in Brandenburg. After the transfer, Dominica’s forestry, wildlife and parks division received three four-wheel-drive vehicles from ACTP that were intended to support fieldwork.

Before the hurricane, an estimated 350 to 450 imperial parrots, also known as sisserou, remained in the wild.

How Dominica’s endemic birds came to be on the plane is the subject of a controversy that has embroiled the governments of Dominica and Germany, the Cites secretariat in Geneva, and the UN environment program.

“All of the birds ACTP took from Dominica were hatched in the wild, most of which were being rehabilitated for release back to the forest,” says Paul Reillo, who holds a PhD in zoology from the University of Maryland and is the president of the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation, a Florida-based not-for-profit.

“Now these once-wild birds, all survivors of Hurricane Maria, will spend the rest of their days in cages.”

Reillo has been working on conservation projects in Dominica for more than two decades. His foundation has the longest running collaborative program with Dominica’s forestry, wildlife and parks division. It does its work in country, with the exception of one captive-bred imperial parrot it has in Florida.

“All of those years of in situ conservation investment and productivity came to a crashing halt when this organisation, acting with a single acting permanent secretary, secretly exported 12 birds off the island without forestry’s knowledge or participation,” Reillo says.

Destruction in Dominica after Hurricane Maria.

Photograph: Le Pictorium/Barcroft Images

The foundation was one of 13 global environmental non-governmental organisations that signed a letter to Erik Solheim, then the executive director of the UN environment program, expressing “grave concerns” about the move.

They feared it would “not be the last such transfer” and said ACTP’s justification – that moving the birds was an emergency action to protect them from hurricanes – was “unfounded”.

A second letter in May was signed by more than 40 scientists and sent to officials in Dominica’s Ministry of Health and the Environment, the forestry, wildlife and parks division, and to Germany’s BfN.

“The export was not authorised by Dominica’s Cites management and/or scientific authorities, and neither Dominica’s wildlife authority … nor its longstanding parrot-program leader … were consulted,” it says.

The letter says the Cites export certificate was signed instead by an acting permanent secretary, Reginald Thomas, in what was then the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

“I have no regrets about what I did,” Thomas tells the Guardian. “For humanity, for science, for conservation.

“I have been labelled as a thief, labelled as all kinds of things – including by some of these NGOs – sending me emails and all kinds – but that is fine because my conscience is clear because I did this for the species.”

He maintains that moving the birds was to protect them from future hurricanes.

Guth initially communicated with Thomas via a local businessman, Steven Astaphan. Astaphan talks freely about acting as a middleman but says he received no financial incentive from ACTP and knew nothing about the transfer of the birds until it happened. He has since visited the association’s facility in Berlin, a trip he says he paid for himself, and took a tour to see the birds.

He got the impression Guth was an avid bird collector.

“Apparently he started collecting birds at a very young age,” he says. “And he seemed very excited about having the birds. Is it bringing in revenue for him? I guess so. Because he is able to survive on it.”

There is no suggestion that ACTP has offered any Caribbean birds for sale.

If ACTP is a legitimate conservation organisation with credentialed, qualified leaders, why the secrecy? Paul Reillo

In April ACTP published a 19-page response to the letters, arguing that an external facility was the best option to protect the parrots from future hurricanes.

ACTP’s critics question that claim. “There is just no scientific justification for it and they should know that it just makes no sense to fly parrots from Dominica to Germany,” says Lisa Sorenson, the executive director of Birds Caribbean. ACTP could not start a breeding program with only two imperial parrots, she says.

ACTP also holds endemic parrots from Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent.

Donald Anthony, a former wildlife officer in Saint Lucia’s forestry department, says he warned the government about ACTP in 2009.

“When ACTP first came to Saint Lucia, they came to our office and they were bragging about how they want to get into business with us because they had all the latest facilities and technologies in parrot breeding,” he says.

“They said they are not conservationists, they are businessmen. From the time the guy said that, I said that is not the kind of people we should be dealing with.”

In 2009 ACTP donated four-wheel drives to Saint Lucia’s forestry department. The following year it reached an agreement with the government to start importing Saint Lucia amazons from both Saint Lucia and the UK, where birds had been held in long-standing conservation programs. ACTP does not publish inventories, so it is unclear how many of the species it still holds.

Saint Lucia’s forestry department did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Where is the transparency?’

Reillo says ACTP appears to lack key features of a transparent, genuine conservation organisation.

“Program documents, scientific, peer-reviewed research papers, animal inventories and transactions, finances and integrity of governance are the hallmarks of genuine conservation organisations. Real conservation zoologists have academic and professional credentials and demonstrated expertise in conservation science.”

“Where is the transparency? If ACTP is a legitimate conservation organisation with credentialed, qualified leaders, why the secrecy?

He says serious questions also need to be asked among international wildlife authorities.

“None of these transactions were done by one person,” he says. “They require the partnering of agencies, or permit offices or people in positions of authority, and therefore their responsibility is to ensure the veracity, transparency, accuracy and legitimacy of every single transaction.

The Australian MP Warren Entsch wants a full investigation into ACTP and the officials responsible for approving the export of native Australian parrots, including a full independent audit of the Australian birds kept in Germany.

“I think nothing less than that would satisfy those of us that have an understanding of this industry,” he says.

• Additional reporting by Tom Allan and Ditte Offersen Lynge

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